Rebranding the Port of Long Beach for a Sustainable Future

In 1923, Long Beach, California was the fastest-growing city in America thanks to its port, a vital transportation hub for the entire Southern California region.

A century later, the Port of Long Beach remains a bustling international shipping center that is once again revolutionizing the logistics industry – this time by charting a course for a more sustainable future. The Stellar team was honored to help the port rebrand to showcase this environmental leadership, with a new visual identity, website, and interactive digital experiences.

Climate change has spurred demands for a more environmentally friendly supply chain. Conscious of this, the Port of Long Beach sought to rebrand as it moved into a new headquarters in 2019. The goal was to highlight the port’s rich history while promoting its commitment to sustainability and green practices in the logistics industry and local community.

Implementing any kind of change at the port, let alone a wholesale redesign is a huge managerial challenge – not least because the site falls under the jurisdiction of the Harbor Commission, which has 11 distinct internal divisions, ranging from Communications to Security. Successful project completion meant collaborating with and aligning all these stakeholders, as well as consulting with the mayor of Long Beach.

We began by meeting extensively with the port’s various oversight groups to understand their roles, priorities, and vision for the new brand. Through this process, consensus and buy-in across the organization were built.

With stakeholders on the same page, we got to work on refreshing the port’s visual identity. The team designed a new logo that simultaneously resembled a shipping container, a pier, a ship’s bow, and a checkmark to signify progress and innovation. Stellar chose a distinctive turquoise color palette to evoke the ocean and the port’s environmental focus.

The revamped visuals were then used to inform a complete rebuild of the port’s website. Stellar implemented a flexible, omnichannel content management system (CMS) to serve as the engine powering not just the website, but all the port’s digital experiences. This approach required significant collaboration between the port’s IT and marketing teams to meet both technical requirements and experience delivery needs.

Translating marketing priorities into technical specifications for the IT team, while also explaining infrastructure considerations and constraints to marketing stakeholders was key to ensuring success of the platform. This ensured the CMS platform could scale to support both the port’s back-end systems and its front-end content delivery across web, mobile, email, social, and in-person digital experiences.

For the new headquarters’ lobby, Stellar also developed an 80-inch CMS-driven interactive kiosk. This digital experience showcases the port’s role in driving regional economic growth, its sustainable Green Port Policy, which preserves the natural wetlands surrounding the harbor, and its educational and community engagement programs.

A Thoughtful, Collaborative Approach

As a government entity, the port has especially rigorous standards around reliability, security, and integration for all technology systems. At the same time, the marketing and communications team required a CMS offering robust content creation, distribution, and analysis capabilities.

Our team conducted a comprehensive evaluation process in partnership with port stakeholders, assessing everything from technical architecture and scalability to usability and content governance features.

Change management was a critical consideration given the number of divisions and users impacted. Stellar supported the port through extensive user testing, training, and internal communications to drive the adoption of the new platform.

On the back end, we mapped all legacy content, metadata, and taxonomies to the new system. The team also built flexible templates and modules to streamline future campaign and asset creation by the port’s marketing users. The platform has the performance and interoperability to plug into the port’s infrastructure while offering an intuitive interface for managing omnichannel content.

• Digital Strategy
• Content Strategy
• Persona Development
• Branding/Logo Design
• Touchscreen Design
• User Experience
• Copywriting
• Front-End Development
• Back-End Development
• Systems Integration