Up Next with Gabriella Mirabelli

In this episode, Jack Oujo discusses his book, Too Smart to Be an Umpire. After eight years chasing his dream of becoming a major league umpire, Oujo was let go and faced with the fact that his "Plan B" was now his "Plan A." The rejection could have broken him. Instead, he translated everything he learned from officiating into building an incredibly successful wealth management firm. The conversation explores how umpiring taught him to think under pressure, manage difficult people, and focus on process over results. Oujo explains why parallel planning matters when pursuing long-shot dreams, how to let angry people exhaust themselves, and why getting fired from baseball became the catalyst for building something greater than he imagined.

Simon Blanchard, Dean's Professor of Marketing at Georgetown University and co-editor at the Journal of Marketing Research, joins Up Next to discuss research published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing on consumer financial data exchange. When a customer earns loyalty points at an affiliate restaurant or checks out using a buy-now-pay-later option, their financial data typically passes through actors they've never heard of. Blanchard applies equity theory to that four-actor ecosystem and explains why brands at the front of the consumer experience may carry reputational risk from partners they don't control.

Ron Rubin, entrepreneur and author of Gold in Your Backyard, built the Republic of Tea and River Road Family Vineyards over five decades while maintaining debt-free operations. His book, named after his father's expression about recognizing opportunities right in front of you, compiles 50 life lessons drawn from Ron's entrepreneurial career. The conversation covers his approach to risk evaluation, premium brand positioning in commodity markets, finding mentors by direct outreach, and building company culture through values rather than just compensation. The conversation touches on everything from practical decisions about work-life boundaries and incorporating feng shui principles into business design to budgeting for mistakes to reduce innovation pressure.

Paul D'Arcy, CMO at Moloco, explores how AI has fundamentally shifted the balance between human and machine decision-making in marketing, with digital advertising leading this transformation over the past decade. The conversation examines the tension between operational efficiency and strategic thinking as consumer behavior undergoes generational shifts in how people discover and purchase products. D'Arcy argues marketers are too focused on using AI to optimize internal workflows while missing the larger strategic implications of AI-driven changes in consumer search, discovery, and purchase behavior that require rethinking brand relevance, community building, and owned digital experiences.

MaryLeigh Bliss, Chief Content Officer at YPulse, has been tracking what young consumers find cool and what keeps them loyal to brands. The two things turn out to be driven by different forces, and understanding the gap between them can change how brand investment decisions should be made. Bliss brings data from YPulse's brand tracker, which covers affinity for over a thousand brands among 13-to-39-year-olds, alongside a separate brand loyalty study. The findings on loyalty, in particular, point to a shift in consumer behavior that happened fast and has a specific cause.

Rick DeLisi, Lead Research Analyst at Glia and co-author of The Effortless Experience, discusses research showing that less than 30% of organizations achieve full value from customer support AI investments. The conversation covers the "AI maturity gap" where adoption does not equal adaptation, why focusing solely on cost reduction limits AI potential, and barriers, including organizational readiness gaps and measurement challenges. DeLisi explains how high-performing organizations approach AI differently through operational changes beyond technology deployment, why low-effort experiences drive loyalty more than delight, and how contact centers can transform from cost centers into strategic growth engines.

Finola Kerrigan, professor of marketing at Birmingham Business School, spent ten years with colleagues studying James Bond fan communities online. Their findings, published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing, upend a basic assumption in brand management: that loyal, vocal fans are always an asset. The research identifies a pattern called regressive nostalgia, where a subset of fans resists a brand's cultural evolution and pulls it toward an idealized past. The conversation covers how brand stewards can distinguish between constructive loyalty and regressive attachment, why listening to the loudest voices can backfire, and what the Bond franchise reveals about managing heritage brands through social change.

In this episode, Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, explains how small businesses can access national press distribution at a fraction of standard costs through eReleases' partnerships. The conversation covers why 97% of press releases fail to generate earned media, the importance of story arc elements like use case studies, and strategic approaches, including industry surveys and contrarian viewpoints. Kennedy discusses how AI replicates unsuccessful patterns, why journalist inboxes have become chaotic from database blasting, the limited value of pay-for-play placements, and how earned media functions as social proof that improves conversion rates and reduces customer churn.

MaryLeigh Bliss, chief content officer at YPulse, breaks down new survey data on how 8-to-12-year-olds consume media. Based on a survey of 1,500 tweens in North America, the findings show YouTube operates as the dominant platform in this age group's life, preferred over streaming services by 66% of respondents. Bliss explains what Mr. Beast's formula gets right, why 70% of tweens still have weekly family movie nights, how short-form content breadcrumbs viewers into bingeable series, and what it means that 87% of tweens want diverse representation on screen.

Rachel Boucher, head of content at Event Marketer magazine, discusses how experiential marketing has evolved from tactical activations to strategic campaign hubs. The conversation covers how the pandemic accelerated planning cycles and hybrid integration, why networking ranks as the top attendee goal at B2B events, and how Gen Z drives demand for offline connection around niche digital communities. Boucher explains why content generation became the number one investment area, how nano-influencers with under 100,000 followers enable personalized messaging at scale, where AI meaningfully improves personalization, and why mobile tours remain among the most affordable and effective formats.