Baseball is excelling, generating $6 billion in revenue last year. But its players are far from a hit off the field. When one looks at the top 10 endorsers in U.S. sports today, none play "America's pastime." Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter would seem to be a marketer's dream team, but Michelle Wie, a teenage female golfer, hauls in about $6 million more in endorsements each year than the New York Yankee stars combined. And when one thinks of the great commercials of all-time involving athletes--such as Mean Joe Greene and Coca-Cola, or Michael Jordan and Larry Bird hoping …

Carbonated soft-drink volume fell 2.3% last year, according to Beverage Digest. Rising prices compounded flagging consumer interest in the category, leading to the sharp decline. Soft drink volume slipped 0.6% in 2006 and 0.2% in 2005. The drop appears to be due to price increases of about 5% in the past year that have made soft drinks less attractive, coupled with continually growing interest in newer drink categories, like enhanced waters and teas. The results would have been "at least several tenths of a percentage point worse" had they not included sales of energy drinks, notes Beverage Digest editor …

Mark McNabb, senior vice president-sales and marketing for the Nissan and Infiniti brands, resigned unexpectedly yesterday and is believed to be moving to an undisclosed Detroit automaker. He was the top American at Nissan North America and a rising star. A source says McNabb faced aggressive and unrealistic sales targets from his superiors at Nissan. McNabb first joined the automaker in 1986, but resigned in fall 2005 and within months joined Mercedes-Benz USA as vice president, marketing. Mercedes-Benz moved him to vice president, sales in January 2007. But McNabb suddenly split in March of that year …

Borders Group is sharply increasing the number of titles it displays on shelves with the covers face-out, a radical approach to boosting sales that will require a typical Borders superstore to shrink the number of titles it shows by 5% to 10%. Reducing inventory goes against the grain of booksellers' efforts over the past 25 years or so. Borders has little choice but to experiment, with the book market facing unmitigated gloom. Competition from the Internet, videogames and other electronic devices has flattened growth in book sales. This year is expected to be particularly tough: There won't be a …

Prospective buyers who click on the link for the Kindle e-book reader at the top of Amazon's home page are informed that due to heavy demand the product is "temporarily sold out." The online retailer won't reveal how many have been sold or when supply will catch up with demand. But judging from online discussion groups, the wait time seems to be about four to six weeks. "It's almost like the literary version of a [Nintendo] Wii," says Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at JupiterResearch. E-book readers let bookworms carry a boatload of titles--more …

A survey of 1,000 consumers finds that 75% of respondents knew that Starbucks was closing its stores for three hours on Feb. 25, but less than half knew why they had closed. The greater message Starbucks wanted to communicate with the PR play--that it is improving the quality of its coffee and bringing the chain back to its roots--"essentially had very little impact on the consumer," according to Ed Murphy, vice president-U.S. retail and restaurant group at Synovate, the research arm of Aegis Group, which conducted the survey. Different surveys have shown otherwise, however. PoliMetrix, a research firm …

Betty Crocker is rolling out Decorating Cookie Icing, which it touts as the first "easy-to-use" professional decorating icing. This form of hard-drying icing--used for gingerbread houses, wedding cakes and cookies--is difficult to create at home, says Kristi Bridges, creative director at The Sawtooth Group, which handles advertising for the product. The first TV ad breaks this week on ABC Family Network, Food Network, HGTV and Lifetime. Bridges says the 15-second spot is designed to promote cookie baking and decorating as a fun, bonding experience for the whole family. Tagline is: "Bake Life Sweeter." It will run through Easter. …

Although Ford says it has not made any concessions to the American Family Association, the conservative Christian organization says it is ending its boycott and claiming victory in its effort to force the automaker to curtail advertising in gay and lesbian publications. The group accused Ford of reneging on a 2005 agreement to suspend advertising in gay and lesbian publications and stop sponsoring gay and lesbian events and causes. It says Ford is once again complying with those terms. Ford, however, claims it has reduced all of its advertising and charitable spending as a result of financial …