Musicians rock the Royal Bengal Room in City Centre with the Ad Rocks anthem, conceived to power Advertising Club Calcutta Consumer Connect Awards; (above) Shilloo Chattopadhyay hands over an award to ABP. Pictures by Rashbehari Das

Consumer is king and it was reiterated yet again at the second chapter of the annual Advertising Club Calcutta Consumer Connect Awards. Held at the Royal Bengal Room in City Centre, Salt Lake, on Saturday, the ceremony was a culmination of painstaking research on consumer feedback on advertisements churned out through 2003-2004.

Not surprisingly, ?human connect? was the factor that came through strong and clear in the exercise. ?Advertisements which speak the language of the people are seen to connect better. The friendly Sachin football campaign by Airtel, for example, did better than the more cerebral ?Express Yourself? one,? said Santosh Desai, president, McCann Erickson, one of the judges who presided over the proceedings.

Kiran Khalap, Pranesh Misra, Prabhakar Mundkur, Kurush Grant, Shilloo Chattopadhyay, Ram Ray and Mohan Menon were the other big guns from the ad world, who judged the difference between creative effort and market results.

?Consumer purchase patterns and market understanding are the key words that led to the exercise,? explained Sanjay Datta, president of the Advertising Club Calcutta, the force behind the show organised in association with The Telegraph and other partners.

The popular trend emerging during the nationwide study conducted by Indica Research was the use of consumer-friendly idioms, which made all the difference between what clicked and what didn?t. ?Horlicks playing the lively kid card in the Epang Opang campaign is a good example,? said market researcher Shilloo Chattopadhyay.

Lauding the consumer connect concept as a ?great endeavour? in the industry, Ranjan Kapoor, former chief of &M and presently country head of WPP, welcomed the move to ?channelise communication between brands and consumers?. ?There is a difference between what we feel is a good creative ad and what the consumer thinks,? reiterated Ram Ray, head of Response, Calcutta.

The jury was clearly out on the fact that ads need to be commercial and not indulgent. Most agreed meets like consumer connect will help do away with the evil of award for award?s sake.

Ironically, it was felt that such a unique concept was being underplayed by the ad fraternity. ?The event is not marketed well. Not many people outside Calcutta know something like this exists,? said Kiran Khalap of Chlorophyll Brand and Communications, Mumbai.

For the moment, though, the voice was drowned as winners cheered, liquor overflowed and a bevy of musicians regaled with an anthem that clinched the cause with ??when the advertising connects, it rocks, it rocks, advertising rocks!?