B.L. Ochman

When fourth generation grocer and YPO member Jeffrey Brown opened his first store in 2004 in a low-income Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, neighborhood with a history of gun violence and hired several returning felons to work in it, he says most people thought he was crazy.
Fifteen years later, he’s CEO and President of Brown’s Super Stores, which ranks in the top 50 U.S. small grocery chains and reports sales of approximately USD500 million. Of his 12 stores, six of them are successful ‘food...

This is the latest in my series of video interviews with experts and authors.
In this interview, Dr JT Kostman - one of the world’s leading Data Strategists and experts in Applied Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing - discusses the role of data science in marketing, social media and education.
Among the topics we covered:
* Who are the key players in AI today?
* Why Artificial Intelligence wlll have a bigger impact on our society than electricity.
* The role of Artificial Intellig...

BuzzFeed's Tasty and NBCUniversal's Today show are extending their partnerships with household brand Campbell's Soup. They're cooking up a campaign that will not only deepen already massive engagement, but furthers their goal of driving shoppers into stores by bringing digital, social and broadcast together in a trend-setting first for strategic partnerships.

The initial results of this big shift in mainstream media planning and buying are already looking like home run.

Mitch Joel, “Six Pixels of Separation” author and podcaster and I discuss the growth of podcasting; who should and shouldn’t podcast; what makes a great podcast; what equipment you need to podcast; what makes brand podcasts effective, and much, much more.
What makes a podcast great?
There are some core passions that create the dynamics, Joel said. These include guests and a theme that is sustainable over time. For his “Six Pixels of Separation” podcast, Joel wants people to feel like they pul...

Is your nonprofit too cash-strapped to run a nationwide awareness campaign with an online contest or to create and manage a wish list with millions of products? You’re not alone. But here’s help – and the cost ranges from free to very little – from Amazon and Google.
In the face of cacophonous competition for donor dollars, a marketing push from Amazon and Google – behemoth sites with huge resources and millions of daily visitors – can engage, entertain and generate donations.
Google and Amaz...

BL and David discuss Google’s new strategy for leveraging the growing library of podcast content; the latest data from Edison Research about the podcast consumer; Amazon’s new Alexa Skill Blueprints feature; Jason Calacanis’ Open Book Challenge race to replace Facebook; SmugMug’s acquistion of Flickr; Burger King’s stealthy campaign to sneak Whoppers into movie theaters; Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes chocolate record; an advocacy campaign that turns victims of gun violence’s handwriting into a too...

BL and David discuss the iconic photo of the crying migrant girl; Richard Painter’s dumpster fire ad; the Facebook fundraiser to reunite the families Trump has torn apart; the Supreme Court’s ruling requiring a search warrant for police to obtain your GPS location data; the Apple/Oprah alliance; banners replaced with cats; Beyonce & Jay-Z’s new album release; the Weather Channel’s immersive forecasts; Google’s new podcast app; Melania Trump’s trolling jacket; Burger King’s Russian babies offe...

What if a wine delivery service, a maker of cooking utensils, or a food brand could reach almost half a billion hungry people just as they're ready to prep a meal? BuzzFeed has now made that exact scenario possible.

BuzzFeed just announced two new offerings: a countertop smart appliance called Tasty One Top and an all-new Tasty iPhone app featuring more than 1,700 videos of recipes from their wildly popular Tasty network. The two work in tandem to make meal prep practically "paint by numbers....

BL and David discuss a Snapchat Lens video game controlled by gum chewing; the Minnesota Public Radio Raccoon who captivated the nation by scaling a 25-story building; the minor league Yankees team fan-named the Staten Island Pizza Rats; restaurant goers paralyzed by choice; the Angela Merkel Instagram G7 post that memed Trump and went globally viral; a great idea for push button customer satisfaction; 13 year-old Courtney Hadwin whose astounding singing voice is Janis Joplin 2.0; rating resu...

The question I’m asked the most is “how do you stay informed?” And indeed, keeping up with the flow of news and information that bombards us daily has become Sisyphean.
Many people have given up, and their skills have very quickly become fossilized.

Yet some people manage to not only keep up but also to keep ahead of the curve. So I asked some of the brightest people I know how they keep ahead of the curve.

“Hope for the Flowers” has been around for 50 years. Its message of hope and transformation is exactly what we need right now.

I had the great pleasure of interviewing “Hope for the Flowers” author Trina Paulus, explaining how her allegory of transformation came to be. Read to children for 50 years, it’s also a profound, multi-layered parable for teens and adults. Once you read the book, you are unlikely to ever forget it.

Engaging with a variety of social platforms is critical to nonprofit marketing success, but effective social media marketing can be overwhelming. It takes time and experience to use social platforms well. Having the right tools can often help, so we’ve compiled a dozen tools to help you manage your social media presence

Josh Bernoff, author of Writing Without Bullshit, says fear of saying what you mean accounts for most of the BS in business writing.

Josh’s top three tips for BS-free writing

Write shorter

Get to the point quickly

Get rid of three kinds of toxic prose

You’ll find many more tips about banishing BS from your writing on Josh’s website.

And here is Howard Rheingold’s often updated list of Crap Detection Resources.

From making firms apply to hire them, to networking behavior that 's just this side of stalking, frustrated job hunters in this tough economy are coming up with unusual, and sometimes wacky, ways to find jobs.

Do they work? Sometimes. Hint: showing up at the recruiter's gym is creepy, not clever. Here are some examples that you may or may not want to try at home. Stroke their vanity. Advertising executive Alec Brownstein bought six ads on Google saying "Hey ...," followed by the name of a top...

Typography? Huh?
Are you are old enough to know what typography was?
A long, long time ago, back in the early 1980s, before the scourge of desktop publishing made everyone a “designer”, typography was integral to the aesthetic of graphic design.
Then, to the horror of those who care about design, programmers became designers and the graphic arts went to hell. And typography went down the tubes with it. Sigh.