Experts say that the cultural-social meaning of national records is being abused and commercialised.

The largest cup of coffee in the world.

Critic Nguyen Hoa believes that setting national records may become a trend in Vietnam. Agreeing with Hoa, sociologist Luu Hong Minh confirmed: “Many more records will be made. This has become a market trend.”

Commercialising records

Last year, the Vietnam Record Book Centre (Vietbook) recognised 30 national records. There are several meaningful records, such as the largest collection of Central Highlands’ epics, the first set of Braille textbooks in Vietnam, and some research works about folk songs in the southern region.

Yet, many records are nonsense or false, typically the tainted giant banh chung (squared glutinous rice cake) and banh day (rice cake) which were filled with sponge produced by the HCM City-based Dam Sen Cultural Park.

The public is also fed up with such records as the largest coffee cup in the world, the largest bowl of soup, the longest cinnamon grilled chopped meat pie, the largest pizza, largest birthday cake, and so on. Behind these records are the names of companies, Vinacafe, CocaCola, Kinh Do and others.

Vietbook recently declared that Vietnamese records in 2009 would continue honouring Vietnamese cooking through vegetarian and traditional cuisines that use vegetables and fruit as materials.

Critic Nguyen Hoa said the movement to create records in Vietnam aims to advertise the brands of the record makers and to compete with others.

Psychologist Pham Thi Lan said making records originates from an aspiration to become the social focus.

The chief of the Sociology Faculty of the Press Institute, Dr. Luu Hong Minh, said: “Nowadays, making records is meaningful in terms of market, rather than culture and social, to advertise individuals, companies and locations.”

For the Marketing Director of Ocean Media, Bui Quy Trung, creating records is a new tool of marketing than other forms like doing charity, advertising, sponsoring TV shows, etc.

Record quality needed

“Many records are so strange so nobody cares and nobody wants to break that record. Such records are ‘tricks’, not the aspiration to surpass human potential and they don’t have cultural or social meaning to earn people’s admiration,” said critic Nguyen Hoa.

Marketing specialist Bui Quy Trung said that the quality of many records is poor, make bad impressions on the public and there may be latent risks for businesses that create the records.

“Using records in marketing is good but businesses should not abuse them,” Trung said.

VietNamNet/DV