Trump did not receive this somewhat dubious honor because he is a marketing machine—though the president’s personal branding is arguably his most consistently successful venture of nearly a half-century in the spotlight. Trump has always made his name and image synonymous with wealth, business aptitude and power, even when the facts didn’t back that image up. Instead, this honor was given to Trump because of the way he’s run the country during his second term in the Oval Office. As Matlins put it, Trump is the Unofficial No. 1 “for his outsized influence on global uncertainty, its near and long-term consequences, and thus on what CMOs and the brands and companies they help steward do and don’t next.”

Marketing is difficult even in the best of times. Figuring out the right ideas, strategies, messages and methods for reaching your targeted customers is far from simple. But when global policy seems to shift daily, with new tariffs, program cuts and military actions being announced on social media at all hours of the day and roiling the business and economic landscape, it’s much harder for marketers to deliver a consistent message—and for companies to make any solid plans. How can marketers be counted on to deliver growth when the economic picture changes every day?

Meanwhile, Trump is doing more to push his brand from the White House. A wealth of merchandise featuring the president’s name and image is available on an official e-commerce website. $TRUMP and $MELANIA are both memecoins. Last week, the Trump Mobile cellphone and service were announced. And an LLC owned by Trump filed to trademark the Trump name for a plethora of virtual products and a crypto wallet. But how well the Trump brand fares over the long run is likely directly tied to how well he performs in his job as president. The constant chaos from this term in the White House—and the wild changes it brings to society—may be the one thing that pulls the Trump brand down.

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However, the ruling doesn’t grant a free pass for AI companies to train their LLMs on copyrighted works, writes Forbes’ Rashi Shrivastava. Some of the books in this case were purchased—though sometimes as used paper copies that were then digitized—but others were downloaded from a pirated books website. And this, Alsup wrote, is likely not a fair use under copyright law. The order states there will be a separate trial scheduled on the issue of the pirated books that were used to create Anthropic’s central library to determine financial damages. The trial will also look at the paper books that Anthropic purchased after downloading the pirated copies—something the order says will not absolve the company of liability.

Trump’s recent attitude toward TV news is reflective of that of the rest of the country, though millions are still watching Fox News. The station was the clear leader in viewers tuning in last Saturday night after the announcement about the airstrikes on Iran, writes Joyella. Fox News had an average total audience of 4.938 million viewers during primetime on Saturday. ABC was a distant second, with 2.346 million viewers, and CNN was an even further distant third, with 1.809 million viewers.

Legacy media of all kinds are losing their audience. Forbes senior contributor Andy Meek writes that the Washington Post’s total paid subscribers has dropped down to 97,000—a far lower number than many would expect for a global newsroom that has a history of producing consequential journalism. Five years ago, Meek writes, the Post reported a subscriber base of 250,000. Now, more people are consuming news via podcasts. Meek writes that progressive podcast the MeidasTouch recently crossed 5 million subscribers.

While users’ conversations and messages on WhatsApp remain encrypted and private, O’Flaherty writes that adding advertisements raises many privacy concerns. A WhatsApp account can be linked to those on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, meaning that targeting information can flow through all three platforms. There also doesn’t seem to be an opt-out option, so WhatsApp users are likely to have more of their data collected now. Jake Moore, a global cybersecurity advisor at ESET, said that users should keep an eye on consent settings and whether they change in the future.

We all know that it pays to build a personal brand, but how much do you need to do to make it work? Optimal personal content production means something different for everyone. Here are some things to do to find what adds up to yours.