Ford Focus Ultimate Test Drive: People's test week pushes our bloggers to the finishing line

The final challenge for the 12 bloggers contesting the Ford Focus Ultimate Test Drive has added a touch of spice to proceedings.

To date, our contestants have been required to select and complete five of a total ten procedures in the Ultimate Test Drive’s rigorous testing program.

Then, a sixth. It was the test chosen by you, the public, via the ‘Like’ button on the Ultimate Test Drive website.

We gathered your ideas for testing and listed what we thought were the top five, from which we asked you to select one. By windup on August 4 there was a clear winner. Test Three required our bloggers to use their car as an office for two hours – motor idling, laptop and phone charging, passenger seat as the desk.

The medical folk, Andrew and Penny, fulfilled rescue missions, with Andrew performing emergency surgery on a patient one could only describe as deathly pale. Or a piece of chicken.

Bianca struck a problem: she doesn’t own a laptop. That did not stop our resourceful young mum, as you’ll see in her video. It’s fortunate indeed the mainframe computer is a thing of the past.

Deciding it’s time to catch up with the folk at Ford, motoring.com.au asked David Katic, the company’s general manager of marketing, how he felt the Ultimate Test Drive was working from the car maker’s viewpoint. He says they’re thrilled by the results so far. “It’s confirmed we’re on track in the way we’re putting it out there,” he said. “We were confident from the outset that the technology was likely to be the seller, and the Ultimate Test Drive’s confirming it.”

The last time Katic looked at the tally, the votes were well into five figures. And he was pretty confident that will have reached six figures by the time voting finishes at 5.00 today.

“In the time we’ve been running social media promotions like this, we’ve never seen a response like the one we’ve had for the Focus, elements of it at least,” Katic told motoring.com.au.

“Particularly the Active Park Assist. I mean, it stands to reason. Until now that kind of technology’s been restricted to prestige models. It’s a first in the small car sector.”

Active Park Assist is one of the high-tech highlights the new Focus brings to small car buyers. It’s an offshoot of the car’s adaptive cruise system – also a first for the small car sector – which uses radar sensors to maintain a set distance from the vehicle ahead when the cruise is active. With the addition of side and rear sensors and tweaks to the vehicle management system, the car can use the motor-driven electric steering to guide itself into parking spots. All the driver has to do is give the order to go and apply brakes when it’s in.

It’s given our bloggers a major point of interest, not to mention plenty of opportunity for hijinks, for example in other things they can do while the car’s parking itself. “Yes, some of bloggers got particularly creative there. Rescue themes were popular with the medical folk – Penny and Andrew. And Warren’s video of making his lunch in his lap while the car parked (with the help of chauffeur Jeeves, anyway) was very clever.”

Visits to the Focus pages of Ford’s main website show that the Active Park Assist hasn’t just fired the imaginations of our bloggers. “We’ve had huge traffic on the ‘experience layer’ of the site – that’s the part where people can click through to watch how it works,” says David Katic.

“And it’s not just about the number of hits. We’re seeing unusually long dwell times as well – that’s the way marketers describe how long visitors stay on particular pages. That means they’re doing more than just passing through. They’re spending quality time with us.”

The park assist is part of a suite of gizmos that’s hard to find on cars costing twice the price. And it’s not just the visible kit like bi-xenon headlights, voice control and rain-sensing wipers. It extends into features like Ford’s Torque Vectoring Control (TVC) system. TVC was part of the handling package that drew plaudits to the rally-bred Focus RS, released in limited numbers here last year. By providing stabilising braking force to individual drive wheels in moments of high stress, TVC helped turn the RS into one of the finest handling FWD cars ever made.

And, of course, the new Focus joins the rarefied league offering a six-speed dual-clutch transmission. Ford’s PowerShift box effectively marries the best characteristics of traditional autos and manuals. It’s integral to the addictive driving experience that tempted Janet’s alter-ego ‘De De’ to take what she deemed ‘the ultimate road trip’ – to a strange and exotic location all of five kays outside Brisbane’s CBD.

For Ford, the Ultimate Test Drive is all about spreading the word. For marketers, word of mouth is gold, says Katic. “It’s the best advertising you can get because it has the integrity that goes with not being bought.”

The catch lies in the risk. “You have to be supremely confident in your product to give it this kind of raw, unqualified exposure. If it’s not up to scratch, it’s going to get hammered. Look at what’s happened with movies: until a few years ago, studios worked on the idea that they had two or three weekends to grab their costs back on a rubbish movie before the word got around, and they’d set their promotional campaign up on that time frame. Now, with Twitter and Facebook on mobile phones, the word’s out moments after they leave the cinema on opening night – even before. And there’s nothing they can do to control the fallout.”

Ultimately, however, events like the Ultimate Test Drive serve manufacturers and buyers equally. “The back-office technology gives us the chance to measure interest in particular aspects of our products – positive and negative. It gives us a good look at the pros and cons of the car through the eyes of potential buyers.”

It’s also invaluable in product planning. “It gives us a good look into the features and specs that most interest people. With imported cars like the Focus, we work on 5-6 month lead times, so it’s very helpful for us to know what you’re keen on and what you could do without. It means that when you’re ready to buy, you’re more likely to find just what you’re after in stock. It gives us advance warning of what you’re most likely to look for.”

An example was the promotional campaign for the new Territory, launched a few months ago. “It flagged strong prospective demand for [the high-spec] Titanium and for the diesel drivetrain. Sure enough, since it’s gone on sale more than 50 per cent of sales have been for Titanium and more than 70 per cent of sales are diesel.”

So our bloggers haven’t just had a ball (we hope) for six weeks – they, and everyone who’s participated in it by voting and by visiting the Ultimate Test Drive and Ford sites have played an important part in helping buyers get what they need and cutting down waiting lists.

Good luck one and all.

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