UN 412 - YPulse + Evan Shapiro - Gen Z Broke the Media Playbook.

Jesse Weinstein is a partner at Phillips & Associates, a former Bronx prosecutor, and a U.S. Navy combat veteran who now represents employees in discrimination, retaliation, and whistleblower cases. In this conversation, he breaks down what counts as discrimination under New York law, why vague complaints to HR can undermine your legal standing, and how retaliation often shows up not as termination but as isolation, removed responsibilities, or inclusion in algorithmic layoffs. Weinstein also explains how contingency fee structures work, what severance agreements waive, and how pre-suit negotiation can protect careers.

Arnd Vomberg, Associate Professor of Marketing at HEC Paris, and his colleagues have spent years studying how consumers respond when prices shift without notice. Their findings, published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing, are directly relevant to every brand competing for attention in an algorithmically priced marketplace. He joins the show to discuss price fairness theory, the habituation effect, and why a guarantee that almost no one redeems can still shift consumer behavior. If dynamic pricing is already in your category, or it's coming, this conversation is where to start.

Most AI safety conversation focuses on what's happening inside the model. In this episode, Dr. Ilan Strauss, co-director of the AI Disclosures Project, shares why he thinks that's the wrong place to look. The bigger risks, he argues, live in the market — in how AI products get optimized for engagement, how infrastructure concentration replicates the platform economy's worst outcomes, and why content creators are unlikely to be compensated without new market mechanisms. If the web taught us anything, it's that open infrastructure and closed infrastructure produce fundamentally different power distributions. AI is at that same fork.

MaryLeigh Bliss, chief content officer at YPulse, brings proprietary brand tracker data to a conversation about how young consumers perceive entertainment and streaming brands right now. Media analyst Evan Shapiro joins her to connect those findings to the structural shifts reshaping the industry. Together, they make the case for why YouTube may already be winning, why fandom is the most durable business model in media, and why the companies still betting on legacy distribution models are running out of time to change course.

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.