Best Personal Branding, Star Award 2018 Malaysia

What is Personal Branding?

Do you even know what does it mean?

You see, Branding has been in existence since the early ages where artifacts, relics are used to differentiate different cultures and eras. Take Malaysia & Singapore for example; Malaysia is under the Commonwealth organizations which was back then and still is under Britain (used to be known as the "Great Britain"). Or even Communism vs Capitalism; These are all a form of Branding.

Today, we are in the Information Age where companies and brands are branding themselves as the preferred Employer and Employee Engagement. That being said, the last phase of Branding is the individuals! Because you and me, we're unique; Everyone is unique! We have our own personal values that makes us who we are today. That is why Personal Branding is important because with all these in place, we can actually make a difference and possessed great values in making the world a better place! But these individuals have not been given the recognition they deserved.

Best Personal Branding Star Award, started in Singapore in 2017; It's to acknowledge these amazing individuals which has impact or left a strong influence on their personal achievements (NOT just in the corporate world, but everywhere else)

The objectives of this special award, is to honour individuals who empowers and gives positive impacts within their industries; Because this award recognises the inividuals achievements as an individual, personal assets, strengths, skills and positioning. And don't be mistaken, because Best Personal Branding Star Award focuses on these leaders and inspiring individuals and not their brand, products or company.

Like many awards these days, the criteria to partake is almost too easy. However, the judging criteria for the Best Personal Branding Star Award is based on 8 strict criteria whereby an individual is accessed on their : (Must have minimum 3 of the following to be nominated for this award)

1. Profile

2. Tribe

3. Media Coverage

4. Intellectual Property

5. Overseas Presence

6. Active in Charity

7. Existing Award Winners

8. Nomination from previous winners

So who's the founder of this award?

Andrew Chow, he is the Top 10 Most Influential Speaker in Singapore 2013 and he's a successful social media and public relations strategist, entrepreneur and speaker based in Singapore. He is also the best-selling author of the highly popular series of books :

Social Media 247

Personal Branding 247

Public Relations 247

I love his books as it really guides you to everything you need to know about the said topics. It's straightforward and easy to grasp and put to practice.

For 30 over years, Andrew has a number of achievements and accolades under his belt. In 2008 alone, he won the Spirit of Enterprise Award and was the recipient of the Successful Entrepreneur Award in 2010. He's also an avid traveller where he recently held his first solo photo art exhibition as a fund-raising event for Singapore local charity, Teen Challenge, whereby he is a volunteer. You can actually follow him on social media under his moniker @ideasandrew.

From L-R : Kendrick Ng, Andrea Chow, Dr Wendy Liew, Data' Dr Nicholas Ho & Ivy Hew

A few of The Finalists for Malaysia this year are : 

Kendrick Ng, he's a COO by day and a renowned artist & digital visual recorder by night. It's really rare to find amazing talents such as his! To be able to digitally sketch a summary of an event or conference in just a short span of time is outstanding! He started out putting his keen observation skills and humor to use as a cartoonist and visual recorder, and created #kendylife. When I first followed his page, I was amazed by the drawings. In fact, I have actually seen his drawings before, especially some of the characters on it that is quite commonly seen on social media and even at public places. Having dedicated himself to art and creativity for the last 12 years and counting, Kendrick continues to challenge himself creatively and I totally support that! This was his summary that he did for today's conference and it's just beyond too good to be true, but it's for real! He actually won the Best Personal Branding Star Award 2017 in Singapore.

Andrea Chow, from KL; Has helped thousands of sales person and business owners double up their sales and improve their businesses over the past 3 years. She serves across Malaysia, Singapore, Columbia, Thailand and Vietnam by using training, coaching and consultation methodology. She also her publish her own book "Breakthrough with a Coach" launch on June 2018.

Dr Wendy Liew, Recognized and awarded as one of the "Women Icons Malaysia 2018" by BERG Singapore and "The 100 Most Influential Young Entrepreneur 2017". She has trained more than hundreds of companies and over 50,000 corporate people including senior top management. She has garnered considerable media and press appearances in local news mediums, magazines and even radio channels. Apart from Malaysia, she also shares her expertise across borders to Hong KOng, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei and Dubai.

Dato' Dr Nicholas Ho, the Executive Director & CEO of Seristine Group of Companies, where one of the most notable achievements of Seristine, under his leadership includes the construction of the tallest residential property in Cambodia (The Skyline). An award-winning entrepreneur himself with a large following on social media at almost 5,000. He also co-founded the Ray of Light (ROL) Club, an organization that does charity work. He is also a Benefactor and Sponsor of the Seristine Endowed Scholarship (administered by the Singapore Management University to help outstanding students faced with financial difficulty).

Ivy Hew, pursued her entrepreneur dreams and founded DTR Group in 2012. With more than 30 years of experience in retail on managing and developing international licensed brands, she helps to secure the right tenants for shopping malls and assist tenants/brands to penetrate into the retail industry. She's also multilingual which helps her to source for manufacturing products easily and procuring international brands expanding into the European continent! She is also the award winner for 2016 Golden Phoenix Awards-Entrepreneurs Awards Winners!

What are the benefits from this Best Personal Branding Star Award?

To build an Asia Business Leaders network community based on Personal Branding. Each winner will also have their profiles listed and can be easily shared via different platforms through the Star Phone application.

You can easily download the Star Phone application on your device and choose a package to get started. It is like an intereactive digital namecard on-the-go. But it's way cooler than that, because whoever has this app installed in their device, all they need to do to contact or look up their friend's profile (who has the same app on their device), they just have to dial *NAME and it will show all the details of that friend of yours. It's really convenient and empowering because of the connection that you are able to achieve within the Star Phone app.

It connects to all the Best Personal Branding Award winners within your country and you can stay in touch with them even after the award ceremony for near future collaborations. And if you head on to Singapore, you can connect with them easily too.

Star Phone is by One Smart Star Malaysia; It's the Malaysian Exclusive Franchisee of One Smart Star, a US patent protected innovation that enables a single point access to the full range of information available by an individual. As mentioned earlier, download the Star Phone app to your device, then simply enter Star (*) and a 4 to 5 digit Identity Code for example *AWARD (*29273) to reach the required contact point for the business information and branding. This services has already been expanded to over 80 countries and clients including many major brands worldwide. One Smart Star Malaysia led by Careyden Wee, an inspiring entrepreneur with an entensive experience in various key industries from insurance, telematics, telecommunications to connected environment in the automobile field.

The award won't just stop here, it will go on and it is targeted to expand into neighboring countries as well. So with the help of this app, we can easily connect and network with past winners and nominees for the award across borders (Eg. If you're from Malaysia and you head to Singapore, you can view contact from Singapore & Malaysia, in future if you head to Thailand, you can connect with winners from Thailand and Malaysia and etc). Like now, I can even contact the founder on Whatsapp through this app. Rest assured, if you'd like to keep your contact and profile details a secret to outsiders, you can set a password so that whoever that dials you up, has to key in a special password to view all your social media handles and contact you directly with ease.

So if you think you have what it takes to be a nominee (must meet with min 3 of the criterias mentioned above) of the Best Personal branding Star Award 2018 in Malaysia, then get the Star Phone app and Dial *AWARD on your device and All The Best!~

"Your Personal Brand is what differentiates YOU from others!"

When you're authentically YOU, your brand has NO competition.

Ps. I'll be sharing my thoughts on Andrew Chow's books (Social Media 247, Personal Branding 247) after I finish reading it, so stay tuned!