• by Karl Greenberg , October 4, 2010

Ford got a lot of buzz for Fiesta Movement, a social-media program presaging the launch of the Fiesta compact car in the U.S. The Dearborn, Mich.-based company is doing something similar for next year's launch of the newest Focus sedan.

The automaker has teamed with "The Amazing Race" reality show and Hulu for a real-time road rally featuring the new 2012 Focus. As with Fiesta Movement, the "agents" will be chosen from online applications and a national casting call in 11 cities with the provisio that applicants have to be social media mavens arriving with their own virtual Rolodex of fans, friends and followers.

The program, "Focus Rally: America" starts Feb. 1 and runs for five weeks, leading up to the launch of the car in both North America and Europe.

The rally will feature six teams of two people competing against one another to complete tasks in cross-country road rally adventure. Long- and short-form webisodes will stream on Hulu five times a week, and participants in the races will upload additional content to their own blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social-media sites. Ford has also launched a web site of its own FocusRally.com, dedicated to the race, which will host video content as well.

Matt VanDyke, Ford's director of U.S. Marketing. "For us, this is a natural progression from integrating product into existing programs to creating our own."

He said players will have to use Ford technology like Sync to perform different challenges throughout the course of the rally, and people following the race can also participate by helping the teams they support. "Essentially, they will be riding along on a very entertaining virtual test drive of the vehicle," he said, in a statement.

Ford is letting people apply through mid-November at the FocusRally web site, which entails uploading a video explaining why one would be the ideal candidate for the show. Ford is also holding auditions for the show in 11 cities: Los Angeles, Tampa, Austin, Boston, Denver, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Houston, Orlando and Las Vegas. Besides having a big following, applicans "Also need to have a big personality and be entertaining on camera," said VanDyke .