Students from Yangzhou prepare the largest ever serving of fried rice, at a park in the city of Jiangsu province on Oct 22. Meng Delong / For China Daily

Sang Jianceng, vice-chairman of the World Association of Chinese Cuisine, said the 150 kg of fried rice was not considered as food because it turned unhygienic due to exposure to elements in an outdoor area for a long time.

Fittingly, the record awarded to the WACC and Songjiacheng Sports and Leisure Park in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, was canceled four days later by the Guinness World Records Consulting (Beijing) Ltd.

During an recent interview with Maccabee, a strategic public relations and online marketing agency in the United States, Jamie Antoniou, senior PR manager for Guinness World Records North America, said in an interview that ideally such events should be associated with a worthy cause or charity.

The advice is really worth learning for Chinese who wish to either challenge existing Guinness records or set new ones to hog global limelight.

Currently, many such record-chasing events in China didn't have a strong sense of charity. The Yangzhou event, for instance, not only wasted enormous amount of food but seemed to disregard current social values like austerity.

There is also a lesson here for Chinese companies and local authorities as well. For, they usually associate with Guinness events to hog global limelight.

In recent times, applications from China for Guinness records, and official recognitions for Chinese individuals and groups, were far more than those in the United States and Japan.

In August, the largest in-bed breakfast event was staged involving 450 participants at Sheraton Chaobai River Hotel in Langfang, Hebei province. Other similar events included 14,345 people taking a collective hot spring bath in Chongqing and a 112.37-meter barbecue string in Suifenhe, Heilongjiang province.

All these events had nothing to do with charity. Nor were there any business motivations and brand promotions associated with them.

According to Antoniou, brands should tread the Guinness water carefully, especially when they decide to stamp their corporate logos on events. For, any negativity toward an event could hurt related brands as well.

He also stressed that companies should associate with only such records that are relevant to their products or services, or hot in pop culture.

At first look, the Yangzhou fried rice event didn't seem to have any Chinese corporate sponsors. But, a line of small Chinese characters in a news photograph of an advertising billboard showed Yihai Kerry was the sponsor.

Based in Shenzhen, Yihai Kerry is a leading agribusiness and food company. It has been in business for over 20 years, but it doesn't produce Yangzhou fried rice, whose history dates back to more than 1,000 years.

It seems as though Chinese companies are ignorant of what constitutes corporate social responsibility and intelligent brand building in this age.

They, and local governments, appear over-eager to associate with any and every Guinness event. Every year, they invest a lot of human and material resources to back events that challenge Guinness world records.

I believe it is important to link a Guinness event with public welfare or some charity theme, particularly when a Chinese company plans to associate with it in order to derive brand mileage and strong market reputation.

That way, companies can avoid strong negative public feelings and media criticism if the event turns out to be dubious eventually.

Contact the writer at wuyunhe@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily USA 11/26/2015 page14)