The Esports Boom in Southeast Asia
Food Sustainability in the Future: GMOs
‘Organic & NON-GMO’
This seems to be the new catchphrase of all healthy food purveyors. GMO is an acronym for ‘genetically modified organism’: essentially any living thing that has had its genetic material altered in some way. This includes plants, animals, or even certain strains of bacteria.
While GMOs are widely accepted in medicine, it is often vilified when associated with food. It may shock some to find out that people have been genetically altering food for thousands of years, usually by breeding two species of plants or animals with favourable traits in hopes of producing a superior offspring. In fact, many fruits and vegetables we now consider commonplace, like bananas, carrots, and corn are the products of genetic interference from farmers. Their efforts proved effective, as besides improving the tastes, these crops are now more resistant to their environment, making them easier to grow. The same process occurs in modern genetically modified foods, or GMO foods, except now scientists, can isolate the favourable traits to ensure it is replicated in the final product.
Genetically modified foods are an invaluable resource as the food sustainability issue grows more urgent in the face of climate change. Growing enough food for an expanding global population is something that can only be done by creating a more sustainable agriculture landscape.
Sustainable agriculture has three pillars, social, economic, and environmental.
- Social: It should produce food that’s nutritious for the population.
- Economic: It should enhance food security for impoverished farmers and families in the world. For instance, by breeding resistance into a plant, whether through conventional or genetic engineering, the chances of unsuccessful harvests are greatly decreased.
- Environmental: It should allow farmers to reduce the amount of land and water they use to foster soil fertility and genetic diversity and to reduce the need for toxic inputs. Genetically modified plants with more resistance will also allow farmers to minimise the number of pesticides needed.
While valid concerns are surrounding genetically modifying foods, the myths perpetuated regarding the ‘dangers’ of consuming these foods are just that: myths. Rather than fear the advancement of genetically modified foods, we should embrace the efforts that can bring us closer to a future of improved food sustainability.
Keeping it Authentic in Digital Branding
As an individual, it doesn’t matter if your professional role is a freelancer or a CEO of a huge conglomerate, personal branding plays a part, as it is the perception of people’s impression of you. But the real question is how do you make your personal branding stand out amongst the ocean of impressions?
That is, by presenting a real and genuine side of yourself, being honest about your values and missions, thus, building an emotional connection with your clients and followers.
Continue reading to find out what are the 3 tips on how to build authenticity in your digital personal branding.
Tip 1: Have A Personality
You need to find your uniqueness, what makes you distinctive amongst the vast crowd. This can be as simple as the colours of your social posts, the tone of voice in your messaging and the attitude that you portray in the public’s eye.
Tip 2: Share Your Voice
Pick the right platform and give your stance on social issues, share your knowledge and industrial expertise to the public. Be on social media and maybe even have your very own website. Having a website to house all your content will allow you to have a more structured start to your digital marketing strategy.
Tip 3: Converse, Rather Than Giving A Speech
It is important to also realise that your consumers are people, and your brand is also managed by people. Hence, it is crucial to interact with your consumers on a more personal level. Understanding your target audience and personalizing content according to your target audience are the keys to sustain your followers and loyal customers.
Ultimately, being a brand that strives for authenticity, the values of transparency and honesty must be held high. To ensure that consumers trust your choices, you must plan and make decisions for the benefit of your consumers. Aim to build an online community that will support you through thick and thin, but at the same time, keep in mind that as a brand, you are giving back to your community, no matter the size.
Podcast: Anabelle Co-Martinent – Starting Up a F&B Enterprise
Are You Ready To Start A Business? Almost everyone has dreamed of starting their own business in their lifetime but what does it actually take to build one?
Anabelle Co-Martinent is one of the founders of La Juiceria, Super Saigon and Hawker Hall. Tune in to the Hello Mentor podcast to hear her thoughts on building a business in Malaysia.
Choosing the Best Crowdfunding Website For You
Imagine pitching an idea to millions of people around the world, to an audience larger than you could ever imagine. That’s exactly what you can do with crowdfunding websites. Gone are the days where budding entrepreneurs must rely solely on loans and private investors, or the days of charities only being able to reach local communities. Sharing a philanthropic cause or a product idea to the internet can help increase the likelihood of successful funding. However, not all crowdfunding websites are created equal, so it’s important to weigh the pros and cons before committing to a site.
- Low Fees
Crowdfunding websites have different funding fees that can range from 0% up to 12% (not including processing charges) So the best way to prepare yourself before committing to a site is to read the fine print. If you use the donor-pays cost option, which is where donors can heed the extra fees, you can inform them that the extra amount they will help you by easing you of the charges set by the crowdfunding platform. - Proof from Previous Successful Campaigns
Most legitimate crowdfunding websites will provide examples of successful campaigns and testimonials from other users, and this is important to note before committing to a platform. While the testimonials are undoubtedly biased since it’s on their website, it will still provide you with the users, donors, and campaigners, which can help when doing further research. There will always be absurd outliers, e.g., the guy who raised $55,000 for potato salad on Kickstarter, the true test of a crowdfunding platform’s success is in its ability to help people raise the funds in everyday situations. - Consistency
While positive testimonials and success stories are important, so is a platform’s track record. If despite having 5 majorly successful campaigns, 100 people report unsuccessful ones, you might want to reconsider the significance of the reach that the platform provides. Look for the overall percentage of funded projects when making your decision, and keep in mind that reputable platforms will usually be transparent with that information. - Ability to Make Deadlines
Consider the platform fees, processing fees, total amount that can be kept, and the amount of time required to create a successful campaign, including the time taken to sign up, publish the campaign, run it, promote it, and collect the donations. If one of these processes will take too long on a particular platform, such as too much processing time before the donations are transferred to you, consider how that will affect your deadlines before committing a website.
How Large Brands Utilise Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing isn’t a new concept, it’s one that has been used by renowned brands worldwide. Not only does it drive creativity and innovation by drawing from a wider pool of ideas and talent, but it’s also simply good marketing. Consumers want to be acknowledged, so it’s always a good idea to get consumers involved in the development process, whether it’s in terms of product design or surveys. Besides, no one knows brands like consumers, so it’s a win-win situation.
Here are some interesting ways brands have gotten consumers involved:
- Oreo made a name for themselves when they launched their “Daily Twist” campaign, a crowdsourced 100-day cookie-design series, in honour of their 100th anniversary. The public was given the power of choosing the winning design. The campaign was a hit and Oreo’s Facebook page sharing increased more than 4,000 percent during the campaign.
- Lego has an established platform for customers to submit their product designs. Like with Oreo, Lego allows consumers to vote for their favourite product designs and ideas. Also, voters must provide a reason for their choice and a price that they’d be willing to pay for the actual product. The most liked ideas then get reviewed by Lego’s official committee. This allows Lego to get ideas from a wider pool, and survey the market demand. They also get free publicity on social media when users promote their ideas to win.
- In 2013, Samsung ran a crowdsourcing campaign to find the best design for a flexible phone display. Some of the requirements include the screen having to be the key element and cost-efficiency. Professional designers, entrepreneurs, and engineers were invited to submit their designs for a chance to win $10,000. Samsung would go on to launch its first foldable smartphone in 2019.
Halal E-Marketplaces
As brands transition online, halal brands and practitioners are seeing the need to meet the needs of their consumers online as well as such creating the concept of a halal e-marketplace. It exists to provide reassurance for those who practise the consumption of halal products as a lifestyle and to educate those who are not aware of the full concept of such a lifestyle.
As said by AladdinStreet’s Co-Founder, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor Al Masrie, “Halal is not just about slaughtering animals, it’s more about global food safety, hygiene, security and a way of life”.
A halal e-marketplace is essentially a marketplace that facilitates and provides sellers and buyers with a trading platform consisting of halal goods and services that are compliant with Shariah Law. It is a form of Quality Control as it ensures that the safety and quality of the products consumed contribute to the wellbeing and health of the consumer, especially in regards to products purchased online which tend to have less transparency.
What makes halal e-marketplaces is that aside from health certifications and fair trade documentation required by consumer products, these marketplaces provide halal certification by various valid certification bodies based on various compliances in different countries that can be verified by the system. These systems and databases all work to certify the authenticity of halal certification thanks to halal validating tools and services such as Halal Verified Engine (HVE) and GlbalHalal Data Pool.
Some examples of such marketplaces include online shopping malls like Myhalmart and Halalmall.online including a premium marketplace called AladdinStreet, which operates on an invitation-only basis complete with background checks on its vendors. Some of these marketplaces cater to a more B2B model such as DagangHalal and Zilzar.
The products that can be found on these platforms are all in compliance with Shariah Law and provide certification for products that require them such as agriculture and biochemistry, F&B, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Even products and services that are necessary but do not require certification can also be found such as jewellery, electronics, education, fashion, books and stationery and even automobiles, just to name a few. Having these products on a halal-certified platform, regardless of certification tends to bring more assurance to consumers that heavily practise the halal lifestyle.
Ultimately, it is branding and halal assurance that come hand in hand in this marketplace’s long term success as gaining consumer confidence and trust is vital for the supply and demand of this business. While it is still very much a niche industry and has only been picking up speed in the last few years despite its long-held place in many individual’s lives, entrepreneurs now have the option to explore into this market further as it becomes more popular among the non-Muslims as well. Keeping up to date with secular trends will help with understanding and catching the attention of mainstream consumers towards this market and helps expose them to halal products beyond their traditional consumer group.
Mushroom Packaging
Next time you buy something online, it may just arrive in packaging made of… mushrooms? That’s right, as a way to combat the growing landfills and excessive use of fossil fuels, a new packaging solution has been created.
Known as Ecocradle, this mushroom-based material is made of fungus roots and residues from farming. It was developed by Ecovative Design in 2010 as an alternative to its environmentally damaging counterpart: polystyrene styrofoam, but can also replace all of the plastic materials used in current conventional packaging.
Using mushroom’s inherent growth power, the packaging can be manufactured and broken down with minimal energy use. Ecocradle can be grown in a controlled environment without light, water, or chemical additives in a week. It can then decompose in compost within weeks!
This incredible mushroom-based packaging garnered global attention when furniture giant, IKEA, announced its plans to replace all its styrofoam packaging with EcoCradle in 2016. The major switch began in 2018 and is still being carried out globally.
Popular Products That Were Crowdfunded Projects
Crowdfunding as a concept has a history dating back to the 1700s, but it has gained traction in recent years with the advancement and growing popularity of the internet. Crowdfunding has become a $34 billion industry, and this figure is expected to triple in the next decade.
It may surprise you to learn that some of the most popular products in the market today were originally crowdfunded projects! Here’s a quick look at just a few of those products!
- Oculus Virtual Reality Headset
The Oculus VR Headset is a well-known gadget that has turned the virtual reality industry on its head. In 2012, founder Palmer Luckey started a Kickstarter campaign to seek funding for a VR headset he had begun working on when he was just 15 years old. Backed by 9,500 people, he quickly hit his $250,000 goal and managed to raise $2.4 million in total. The Oculus VR headset became one of the first VR headsets to hit the retail shelves. Less than two years later, Facebook bid $4 million for the prototype. The Oculus Rift was forecasted to earn approximately $5 billion in 2019 alone. - Fidget Cube
Most of us remember the fidget cube craze when everyone had one of these dice-looking devices. In 2016, brothers Mark and Matthew Mclachlan launched a Kickstarter campaign to help create the first Fidget Cube prototype, which had been designed over a four-year period. With 154,926 backers pledging $6.4 million to help bring the product to life, the fidget cube became Kickstarter’s 10th most successful fundraiser. - PopSocket
Nowadays, it’s commonplace to see a small plastic contraption attached to the back of people’s phones. This handy contraption, called the Popsocket, was invented by David Barnett, a professor of philosophy. The idea came about when he glued two big plastic buttons on the back of his phone to keep his earphones untangled.
The Kickstarter campaign that was launched in 2012 raised $18,951 with 521 backers. In 2018, Popsocket LLC raked in a profit of over 490 million. It is currently still one of the most popular phone accessories sold on Amazon.
Podcast: Sarah Lian – On a career in Entertainment, Entrepreneurship, Women Empowerment and More
Sarah Lian is an entrepreneur who creates opportunities for inspiring women to share their gifts and talents to affect positive change. She’s the Founder and Managing Director of Suppagood, a Malaysian talent management agency that aims to nurture talent potential and develop their professional careers. And her latest venture was the launch of Supparetreat, a community that gives women the tools to succeed in every area of their life.
On this episode of the Hello Mentor podcast Derek and Sarah talked about her journey and challenges in the entertainment industry as well as Supaparetreat. Sarah also shared her advice on how to manage negativity on social media.