Yesterday I was invited to attend a very special social media event hosted by Ford Canada. It was ultimately to learn about the new Ford Escape. I was happy to attend. The agenda was one of the most creative I’ve seen for a this kind of brand-focused event, smartly designed to avoid being all about the hard sell, in fact, it was anything but. The day was more of a really fun show and tell. Scratch that, it was a show and tell with a side of WE DARE YOU TO DO IT.
I was encouraged to step outside of my comfort zone yesterday along with a bunch of other fabulous blogging friends, and it was awesome.
First up: we met for lunch and a debriefing at the Hotel Lac Leamy.
Second: we jumped into our Escapes with our assigned partners and made our way over to a very large part of the parking lot that was set aside for a road handling course (!).
Then, after a bit of instruction, we drove. There were twists and turns, and oh my, I was able to put my pedal to the metal and push it to the limit. Here is a video of my first turn around the course. Hysterical shrieking is brought to you by my driving partner, the lovely and charming Erin Blaskie. She had reason to be afraid, clearly. :)
I’ll be honest. I was scared. But I did it. I DID IT. It doesn’t seem like I’m going very fast in the video, but I was. There was a burning rubber smell when I was done.
When I completed this lap my heart was pounding a million miles an hour, at which point someone decided I would be a fun person to interview. Ha.
I will not show you the bit about me testing out the Escape’s very cool parallel parking assist function. I don’t have it yet, and I think I swore. :)
I will say this, I was very impressed by what I saw yesterday, and it’s more than just great handling and raw power for when you need it (torque! horsepower! va-va-voom!) and cargo storage, but Ford’s commitment to greening up their cars includes a lot of home-grown innovations which I think is critical – not just for our environment for our economy too.
Afterwards we proceeded to another demonstration which was divided into stations, but our role here was a little different. One part of it had us loading the roomy trunk full of foamy tetris-type shapes (Erin and I held the record for fastest time for awhile) and another allowed us to star in our own short adventure movie. It was hilarious. If I get my hands on the video I will upload it.
Next we drove the Escapes to LaFleche for a ziplining/caving part of our adventure. Not only did it give us a chance to test the vehicles on the road (along with the navigation system and all that stuff) but it was a much softer way of showing us the car on our own. No hard sell here.
I chose caving over zip-lining. I’ve done the whole course at LaFleche and hadn’t seen the caves there. I was only mildly freaked out and required a tiny bit of hand-holding. But I DID IT. Hoo boy.
I was happy to see the light of day again:
It was DARK in there. And apparently there were bats too. Gah!
Afterwards we motored back to the hotel to change for dinner and drinks. I have not mentioned that this day required three outfit changes, a record for this kind of social media event. (I’m not complaining.)
At the end of the evening we were each given our own Ford Escape. A lovely way to cap off the day! Ha.
Ford Ottawa gave a few of us a really great experience and made many happy memories. And maybe they even sold a few cars yesterday.
