What You Need in the New Economy in 2021

COVID-19 has been a year of havoc for many – loss of jobs, business shutdowns and economic downturn. 

Questions on how to pivot and relaunch businesses, land a job during the pandemic, retain talents, secure clients and investors remain unanswered as the curtain of 2021 rolls up. 

The global pandemic has left a mark so deep in the world of economy and businesses that we cannot just flip the page and pretend that nothing has happened. To the readers of this article, we have good news for you. We have been supporting struggling entrepreneurs, working professionals and business owners to get back on their feet in this trying time with our educational endeavours. And now we would like to offer you the opportunity to get some of your burning questions answered in our upcoming FREE Branding Inside Out Facebook Panel Session with industry experts Freda Liu, Andreas Vogiatzakis and Wendy Lee. 

Andreas, Freda and Wendy each has more than 20 years of experiences transforming people and businesses, navigating them through global crises. In this free panel session, you will be able to take home valuable advices in branding, leadership and business transformation, that could potentially be game-changing to your career and business.

More about Freda, Andreas and Wendy: 

  • Freda is a lead presenter, producer, conducted over 5000 interviews with prominent names including Martin Cooper, author Stephen Covey, motivational speaker Nick Vijucic, former GE CEO Jack Welch, the Duke of York HRH Prince Andrew and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. She was also recently awarded the ASEAN Rice Bowl Awards for Malaysia Startup Journalist Of The Year and is a nominee for MaGIC’s Social Enterprise journalist. 
  • Andreas is currently the Executive Director of AMVPlus Advisory. He is the CEO of multiple top-tier agencies, an award-winning marketing maverick, and has navigated companies through global monetary crisis & two global pandemics.
  • Wendy is the CEO of Chapter One Asia, and has trained more than 250,000 corporate executives from over 15 countries and mentored over 150 image consultants from all over the world. As a bestselling author, she was appointed as the BrandImage Consultant for Sichuan China and had garnered multiple awards such as The Asian Image Consultant of the Year, MIA 70 Rising Personalities on LinkedIn In Malaysia in 2020 and the Golden Phoenix Entrepreneurial Award.

Event details of Branding Inside Out Panel Session: 

Date: January 13
Time: 3-4pm
Format: Facebook Live Panel and Q&A
Fee: FREE

What’s in it for you: we have also partnered with these industry experts to offer everyone who has signed up to the event the chance to win a free consultation session with these industry experts. Winners will be announced during the event session.

You can register for FREE here: https://bit.ly/bio-giveaway

Let us answer the questions that 2020 has swarmed you with, and give your 2021 a stronger, more promising start. 

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. 

  1. Social: It should produce food that’s nutritious for the population.
  2. 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. 
  3. 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.

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. 

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.