 When Caltex was formed in 1936, it adopted a star as its logo. No wonder, for the company was entering many markets where the Texaco Star was already a hallmark of quality, service and reliability. The red Caltex Star was intersected by the word “CALTEX” printed in black letters and surrounded by a white field – a subtle departure from the Texaco logo of that time.
As Caltex became known in its marketing areas, it gained its own brand identity as a company recognized not only for its quality products and service but for its ability to build on the varied cultures in which it did business.
Over time, the Caltex logo and brand identification evolved. By 1971, the logo had changed subtly when the word “CALTEX” was printed over a white stripe that intersected the red star. When the company launched its New Look program in 1983, a key element at retail outlets was a white star on a red background with white stripes running diagonally across the corner of station canopy fascia. The logo included the word “Caltex” in a customised typeface. At the same time, the company didn’t abandon its past. On a steel pylon outside each newly refurbished station stood a larger metal sign featuring the split-star logo, familiar since Caltex’s first days a half century earlier. Along with the new logo, the company remodeled most of its stations to give them a modernised, more uniform look.
 Reflecting the company’s continuing evolution, a 1996 branding campaign introduced Caltex’s new logo, the Delta Star, featuring a distinctive five-point star with a dynamic delta at its center and a new red, white and blue colour combination. The blazing red Delta was designed into the new Caltex Star to make the Star unique and convey a sense of movement, continual change and dynamism to the company’s customers and key partners. The new logo was created for maximum visual impact, especially at retail sites. As one print ad read, “It’s not just a change of symbol, it’s a SYMBOL of CHANGE.” This new corporate and retail identity campaign was driven by a growing emphasis on consistent packaging and intensified attention to brand development.
At the same time, Caltex encouraged its employees to recognise that the new brand philosophy represented part of an important process of continual change. For employees, its key component involved fostering a greater understanding and deeper relationship with customers and partners.
In 1999, Caltex introduced its “one stop worth making” campaign as part of its enhanced brand positioning program. The campaign played up not only the Caltex retail stations but also the growing number of Star Marts. Underlying these changes were the company’s brand values, which focused on helping people achieve their goals through simple but important solutions to their immediate needs.
Caltex enhanced its brand positioning by boldly launching products in time to usher in the new millennium. The new products were Havoline Energy, Vortex fuels, and Delo engine oils. The timing of launching not one, but three key petroleum products to an Asian marketplace that was still recovering from a painful economic crisis further solidified Caltex’s brand identity by giving customers new, innovative products they needed.
 For Caltex, the power of its brand is the sum total of what the company stands for in the customer’s mind – and the awareness that every interaction forms an impression. The Caltex brand is the embodiment of everything the company strives to accomplish – a promise to all whose lives the company touches. When customers see the Caltex brand, it acts as an endorsement of quality. This is because the Caltex brand tells customers that the company is professional, solid, well established, agile, customer focused and socially responsible.
Caltex promises its customers, partners and employees that it will be there to meet people’s small, day-to-day needs, providing those little, simple or necessary things that help them get on with the bigger things in their lives.
The company’s branding philosophy grows out of the recognition that a powerful and attractive brand image is much more than a logo or trademark sign. Rather, it is the perception created by the multitude interactions that a customer has with the company.
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