Reimagining MV Rides With Impactful, Modern Branding

Founded in 1984, MV Rides (or Martin & Vleminckx) has established itself as a global leader in the rollercoaster manufacturing industry. The company stands out for its commitment to quality, safety, and satisfaction, setting the gold standard in amusement park attractions.

MV Rides has successfully installed hundreds of rollercoaster rides internationally, including in Montreal, Vancouver and Shenzhen. They specialize in merging cutting-edge technology with creative design. Notably, the MV Rides team created record-breaking rollercoasters such as the Top Thrill Dragster and Kingda Ka. The MV Rides team continues to focus on innovation and quality, offering custom-designed thrills that align with each park’s unique theme and exceed industry expectations.

The Ballistic Arts team revitalized MV Ride’s brand and website to give it a more professional and modern image, better showcasing its expertise and industry knowledge. As an experienced digital marketing agency, our mission was to transform the company’s brand identity and digital space and position MV Rides strategically ahead of its competitors. We worked closely with the MV Rides team to meet tight timelines, ensuring the company could present the new look at a significant rollercoaster manufacturing event in 2023.

Problem

Despite MV Rides’ status as a high-quality rollercoaster manufacturer, its brand image and online presence failed to mirror its industry-leading expertise.

For decades, MV Rides was known for building wooden roller coasters. However, when the company expanded its expertise to other types of roller coaster manufacturing, its branding fell behind.

The company’s dated visual identity positioned it at a disadvantage against competitors and failed to fully represent MV Rides’ expanded roller coaster manufacturing capabilities. A key aspect of this branding challenge was the company’s reliance on brown as its primary colour, which restricted its visual appeal and branding possibilities. Unfortunately, another layer of complexity was that our client’s competitors had already adopted many appealing colour options.

Moreover, the lack of robust and modern branding made it challenging for MV Rides to establish an impactful online presence via their company website. Beyond the branding shortcomings, the website had numerous technical problems, including UI/UX design flaws and sluggish loading times, which impacted its overall usefulness.

 

 

Solution

The Ballistic Arts team created a multifaceted, strategic approach to address MV Rides’ main challenges. Given the highly competitive nature of the rollercoaster manufacturing industry, a pivotal part of the project was revitalizing the company’s brand identity to reflect the team’s expertise and professionalism accurately. This improved branding needed to be carried through other aspects of the project, including sales and marketing materials and a fresh company website.

With so many moving parts, the project was highly collaborative, requiring precise, consistent communication between our marketing agency and the MV Rides’ team, including various department directors. With their feedback, we positioned the global roller coaster manufacturer apart from its competitors with new, contemporary branding that helps attract future investors and clients.

Part of the successful completion of this project was to meet a strict deadline. To ensure timely delivery without compromising on quality, our team prioritized tasks strategically and focused on creating detailed mockups and prototypes. This approach significantly reduced the need for extensive revisions and shortened feedback cycles, enabling us to propel the project forward efficiently.

Detailed Process

Brand Build: Crafting a Distinctive Design

Our team decided to start by changing MV Rides’ branding to ensure efficiency. As an experienced creative marketing agency, we knew it was vital for overall project success to begin with revamping the brand design.

Our lead graphic designer revitalized the brand by introducing new logos, colour palettes, and typography to the MV Rides team. We opted for a bold logo and bright and vibrant colours, a significant upgrade from the brand’s outdated logo and plain brown hue. We rounded out the brand identity with a modern and sleek font, perfect for use across various platforms.

We stayed true to the primary objective: to create a brand identity that truly captured the professionalism and innovation at the heart of MV Rides. We elevated their branding beyond their original expectations and created sales and marketing collateral aligned with the company’s new look and feel.

Discover how our experienced designers can elevate your brand

Setting the Stage for Web Success with UI/UX Design

Before diving into the complicated backend of building a website, we believe it’s essential to give clients a better understanding of the website we want to create. The best way to do this is to create realistic, detailed mockups that showcase the key pages, demonstrate design ideas, and lay out the proposed navigation structure. 

 

 

By completing these wireframes first, instead of building the website immediately, we can minimize costly corrections and encourage open dialogue between our design and client teams.

Our UI/UX designer presented our ideas in mockups of several vital pages, incorporating the new modern branding and a user-friendly interface. Since we presented these prototypes on Figma, we received feedback easily and made necessary revisions quickly.

As mentioned above, the original MV Rides website felt clunky and outdated. Our mockups focused on improving the on-page layouts to make the customer’s journey natural. We also redesigned the website navigation and how essential information was presented—now customers can get more joy from browsing the MV Rides website.

MV Rides’ updated website features a brighter, bolder colour scheme that complements the excitement surrounding its products. Potential customers can now find the most critical information more easily. Overall, the website exudes professionalism, quality, and experience.

Using JAMstack for a Secure Website Build

The last piece of our multi-faceted project was building the website. We utilized our JAMstack approach to ensure MV Rides’ new website is future-proof. What are the benefits of going this route?

JAMstack allows for the flexibility to change CMS if MV Rides desires to in the future—without impacting the site’s front end. All the designs we did won’t disappear if they decide to make a CMS change! Plus, this method added helpful security features.

Results

The MV Rides team was excited as soon as they saw the new brand build. With very little back-and-forth about crucial branding elements, we were able to start designing branded materials like company documents, presentation cards, and other marketing assets.

Once the new website went live, the company saw a dramatic performance improvement. Its rankings are now in the 90s (depending on the measurement tools used), up from 60s previously. 

Because we strategically completed all the project’s components on time, we were able to coincide the launch of the company’s new site with the unveiling of the refreshed brand. Web visitors were immediately impressed by the more intuitive and modern interface that allowed them to explore MV Rides’ projects and products more efficiently. 

One of the more popular additions to the website? A project map that allows people to quickly visualize how internationally experienced the MV Rides team is when it comes to building exciting rollercoasters!

The focus on optimal user experience and accessibility ensured that all visitors received the best possible online experience with MV Rides.

 

 

Supporting Industry-Leading Companies

The transformation of MV Rides’ brand and digital presence is a testament to Ballistic Arts’ commitment to the unique needs of our customers. We do everything possible to create tailored marketing solutions that suit a company’s needs. MV Rides has a distinctive story and exceptional experience; the challenge lies in effectively showcasing these valuable qualities.

Ballistic Arts is committed to supporting you and your business. Using a combination of proven data-driven and creative marketing strategies, we want to highlight what sets companies apart from their competitors. 

Our collaborative approach and innovative working methods allow us to develop unique solutions and work together with clients to ensure optimal outcomes. Combined with our deep knowledge of web development, branding, and many other key marketing areas, we want to help businesses succeed.

Collaborating with companies that set higher innovation and quality standards in their industries is a privilege and aligns with our belief in continuous improvement at Ballistic Arts. Through effective collaboration, we can fully highlight the outstanding features that businesses can boast about. MV Rides now has branding, marketing materials, and a website that are all aligned, exemplifying their long-standing experience in the rollercoaster manufacturing industry.

Are you looking for a marketing company that can listen to your unique needs? Let’s start getting you the results that matter.