Everyone loves appalams, but…

When it comes to the ultimate crunchy sidekick to typical rice meals, the appalam takes top spot. No other food even comes close. Lanson had been manufacturing and marketing appalams for a number of years with great success. Now, they were looking to repackage mini versions of this crispy wonder as a snack – competing with the likes of established players like Lays and Bingo. 

The problem: Perception. 

While appalam was a firm favourite in almost every household, people associated it with traditional rice meals – not a packaged snack. An appalam was something you’d mix with a steaming bowl of sambar or rasam rice, not a snack you’d binge eat in the middle of a cricket match. 

We figured the way forward was to give these mini appalams a modern touch. And so, we started with the name.

Meet Popodax!

Crunchy, young, fun – the name captured everything the new snack wanted to stand for without compromising on what endeared appalams to consumers. For the packaging, we settled on the illustration of a traditional appalam seller with the snacks placed in baskets, creating a balance between modernity and tradition. 

The best part? The idea for the ‘Popodax’ launch campaign came directly from the name. We went ahead and created a whole bunch of fun words – English and Tamil –with ‘ax’ at the end – like superax, munchax, kalakalax, tasteax and so much more. We even created a Popodax dictionary and a song based completely on words like these.

The launch was a success as the Popodax song painted the town every shade of ‘awesomeax’!