New Ford Focus Ultimate Test Drive: School's In

Last weekend was the first chance our New Ford Focus Ultimate Test Drive
finalists had to weigh up their competition. Each state’s finalists – three in Queensland, four in Victoria, five in NSW –   attended a comprehensive briefing

If there’s one thing Saturday’s briefing for our finalists proved, it’s that there’s more to a win-a-car contest than just winning a car.

Indeed, there’s much more to the Ultimate Test Drive experience for our lucky dozen than just grabbing their cars and their neat little Sony Bloggie Touch HD cameras, driving into the wild blue yonder and posting whatever they want on their blog sites. And that was reflected in the working day they put in at venues in Sydney and Melbourne.

The handover and briefing session was nothing if not comprehensive. On-hand were marketing people from Ford and agencies, photographers, the odd motoring.com.au hanger-on and in NSW instructors from Ian Luff’s Driver Training centres.

The lucky 12 were soon to find the next five weeks will require a mix of imagination, strategic savvy, media planning and execution skills -- all glued together by a good measure of personal discipline.

The finalists were given a thorough run through the car’s cabin and the technological wizardry that Ford believes will make the new Focus so competitive in its sector. A thorough understanding of each of these features is imperative to contestants getting the most from their car to report back through their blogs.

One by one, they learned about the smart key, the integrated voice control, syncing phones with the Bluetooth system, finding out how to use the park assist and getting in all the practice they needed with each.

Then came an hour’s ‘drive-to-survive’ training from Luffy’s people and – finally! – the chance to take the car for a quick spin and put to use what they’d learned.

Then came the photography session and a quick, light lunch while the PR and marketing people demoed the Sony Bloggie Touch full-HD MP4 camera each will be using to record and post their experiences as they put their cars through a multitude of tests.

The win-a-Focus field was given a rundown of dos and don’ts, first in the use of the cameras and editing their footage, then in how to approach social media. Particularly Facebook, which they’ll be using as their primary tool…

Keep your video posts short, they were told. But not too short – a couple of minutes is ideal.

Immerse the viewer in your experience. Include your friends finding out about and marvelling at the car. Show the contribution the car makes to whatever fun you’re having. But keep it authentic, keep it clean and stay on the right side of the law.

Then came Social Media 101, through which there was plenty for anyone to learn about the use of Facebook, Twitter and the like. For the purposes of the Ultimate Test Drive, they were encouraged to go in exactly the opposite direction to more conventional promotional material.
The tips?

Don’t’ lie or obfuscate about who you are or how you got the car.

Don’t carry on like an advertiser, don’t report it all like news and don’t lecture. Just be the person you are, the person the judges chose for the job. Be present, tell it like it is as engagingly as you can

Lastly, of course, came the housekeeping – how the voting works, the stuff about insurance and the like. Essential, yes, but perhaps not exactly what they wanted, one suspects, with their bags in their cars, the keys in their pockets and a whole new world of driving waiting for them beyond the fence.

Checkout the New Ford Focus Ultimate Test Drive minisite
and while you’re at it why not dream up a challenge for our bloggers to complete.