Ford has teamed up with the producers of The Amazing Race to develop a cross-country road rally web series broadcast on Hulu and Youtube where the audience gets to directly help competitors complete puzzles and challenges for a $100,000 prize. Eight online players will be rewarded for their efforts with the new 2012 Ford Focus, and even more will win a trip to lend a hand as participants at rally events.1
By Michael Andersen, originally posted at ARGNet
Reality show audiences can often support their favorite contestants by calling in votes. Focus Rally: America is taking audience participation to another level by bringing fans directly into the action by solving puzzles and completing challenges to help their favorite teams and accumulate points for a series of prize drawings. The Ford Motor Company partnered with the creators of The Amazing Race to produce the show, scheduled to begin February 4th.
The show itself follows six teams of two people as they drive across the country in the new 2012 Ford Focus competing in tasks. Fans can follow their progress in real-time online on a GPS-enabled map, and long- and short-form webisodes will stream on Hulu five times a week for American audiences, with highlights available worldwide on YouTube. Contestants will be asked to draw upon their fans for support throughout the challenges: twenty-three fans will even win a trip for two to participate in the Road Rally Challenges. Six of these live challenge participants will win a 2012 Ford Focus.
Interested in getting started? Head on over to FocusRally.com and register to play. You can start collecting points by inviting friends to join, answering daily trivia questions, and participating in the Road Trip Challenge, a series of fifty online puzzles. Accumulate enough points, and you'll level up and unlock new privileges and features on the site. Rack up more points than any other player? You'll win a Ford Focus. An additional Ford Focus will be awarded to a registrant, selected at random. The Road Trip Challenge puzzles are relatively straightforward, requiring you to identify landmarks and cities based on clues like an image or driving directions, but subsequent tasks and challenges are bound to get more complex once the race starts.
For more information, follow the Focus Rally: America Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Note 1. The original version of this article misstated the number of prizes in the Focus Rally: America contest. Ford will be giving away eight 2010 Ford Focuses: six to rally event participants, one to a registered participant chosen at random, and one to the participant with the highest score.
