Case Study
Belgian Rally Championship delivers holistic online experience to its fans with the help of HYPE
Client
Sanctioned by the prestigious Royal Automobile Club of Belgium, the Belgian Rally Championship is the country’s top domestic rally competition, оrganized each year since 1980. Each season is held across 8 rounds, including the most important events like GEKO Ypres Rally, the Tour of Flanders, Rallye de Wallonie.
Challenge
Rally racing has always been a synonym for high-technology, adrenaline and passion. This is why BRC wanted to update their outdated branding and website and to show off that they are a modern organization which cares about its digital vision and customers. The biggest challenge which the customer had was the outdated vision of the brand, and the bad user experience in the website
Solution
We started with updating the BRC logo and it’s sub brands. Having a refreshed branding always inspires the updates in the website as the changes in the brand, are reflected in the online presence of the company as well. In parallel with the website, we have developed a mobile application for all BRC fans, where they can see any statistics, standings and upcoming events in real time just in your pocket. This app is aimed to be helpful during races, as the users will be able to follow up the results instantly.
Responsive Website Designs
Probably the biggest challenge in updating the branding was developing a simple and memorable mark and message. Initially we started by brainstorming keywords for the new BRC identity. We wanted to avoid the typical car symbols and to differentiate the BRC identity from the ones of similar organizations. To better communicate the core values of the organization, we decide to go further with a flag in motion concept that combines both the official Belgian flag in combination with the classic racing stripes flag. We believe that this symbol best reflects the company vision.
To separate the Main BRC brand from its sub brands HBRC (Historic Belgian Rally Championship) and JBRC (Junior Belgian Rally Championship) we used different color codes for the sub-competitions. The new identity was well perceived by the Belgian rally fans, who send a positive feedback for the redesign.
Prototype
Before we started with the design, we spent several weeks with attention to the user experience in the site. As BRC has a lot of statistics and information in their website, we had to decide what is the best way to organize this information. After several weeks of validating and improving the wireframes, we have agreed on the structure of the website and the mobile application and we were able to start the design of the responsive website and the mobile app.
Mobile App
Having a great mobile app was very important for the success of the project. When the fans are physically on the track, they don’t have access to their PCs or TV. This is why, it was important to create a user-friendly application, where they can see in real time the statistics for all drivers and teams. We have used the new branding to create a simple and clean mobile application, with attention to the overall user experience.
Responsive Website
As not everyone will download the mobile app, BRC wanted to reinsure that they will not lose any fans because of bad mobile experience. Because of this, we also made the website responsive for any type of mobile devices.
