Xperience Uses Trivia to Jazz up Ford/Microsoft SYNC Tour

Red-blooded brand Ford partnered with Microsoft to produce SYNC, a 28-city nationwide tour that kicked off at the 2008 Super Bowl. The power pair tapped Xperience Communications -- which either ran out of Xtra Es or pulled its name out of a retro hat -- to help fuel tech enthusiasm.

The tour sought to educate attendees about Microsoft technology in Ford vehicles: hands-free calling, audible text messages, voice-activated music, instant voice recognition (one would hope), automatic phonebook transfer, and multilingual capabilities, among other exciting distractions.

Xperience made three major contributions:

SYNC THAT TUNE, a competition inspired by "Name that Tune!," where an MC quizzes teams on related tech and brand trivia.

SYNC TECH CHALLENGE, an in-vehicle game where participants used voice-activated SYNC technology and SIRIUS Travel Link to compete for prizes and solve scavenger-hunt-style problems, like "Where's the cheapest gas?" and "How do you get from A to B without encountering traffic?" Sounds like too much fun to stand. Points for practical application of the technology, though.

SYNC COUNT CHALLENGE, where people guessed how many musical notes could fit into the SYNC logo. Now you're probably wondering what the logo looks like. Kill two birds like so: learn about SYNC and scrutinize the logo on SYNC My Ride.

Sounded like fun for the whole family. Read more about the Ford SYNC tour on the Xperience website. (I'd link it, but you know those crazy kids and their AJAX.) I also hounded them for goal conversion feedback and other crunchy stuff, so expect updates to this post if they deliver.