The State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), the official partner of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the world's largest public service body, is boosting its brand's image by shouldering Olympic social responsibility.

The company, China's largest power transmission company which serves more than 1 billion people across almost 88 percent of China, organized a workshop focusing on Olympic marketing and brand building under "Olympic social responsibility" in Beijing last week.

Experts attending estimated that Olympic marketing has promoted SGCC's brand value by at least 15 percent.

"Through a series of Olympic marketing strategies, we have improved the company's brand value which in turn boosts SGCC's development," vice-head of SGCC's Olympic office Yao Lixin said at the workshop.

"The Olympic marketing of SGCC opens a new way for building the brand of the State-owned enterprises (SOE)," said Wang Zhongming, research center director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

In something of a first for State-owned enterprise, SGCC issued its first social responsibility report in 2006.

The idea of Olympic social responsibility was first proposed in early 2008 at a seminar on Olympic and corporate social responsibility (CSR) held by SGCC - a move to show the company's social responsibility and its cooperation with the Olympic Games.

Cao Zhi'an, vice-president of SGCC, said in April that the company would meet Olympic social responsibilities by upgrading its services for customers and the Games themselves.

He also highlighted the range of energy-saving and environmentally friendly technologies the electricity giant employed in building facilities for the Games.

(China Daily July 11, 2008)