This piece, obviously written by a baseball fan, looks at a cross-section of marketers advertising on the World Series broadcast for their fiscal strength and what they will tout during the game. The top five: Yum Brands (Taco Bell), Diamond Foods (Kettle Chips), Procter & Gamble (Old Spice), Harley-Davidson and DirectTV.

A week after doing a four-year union contract that should ultimately reduce its labor costs, Ford Motor Co. announced a $1.65 billion net profit, or 41 cents a share, for the third quarter of 2011, giving the automaker its 10th consecutive quarter in the black.

The two largest credit-card networks, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., want to use what they know about people's credit-card purchases for targeting them with online ads. This would line people's Internet lives with shopping, but also kill any sense of online consumer anonymity. The two companies would make a killing selling access to the insights they gather about people with every credit-card transaction.

That's Alan Pearlstein's position in a column in which he argues that, in spite of the rich media advances, it's not a good place for branding exercises.

The popularity of daily deal websites is limited to younger and more affluent consumers, according to a survey released Monday by global consulting firm Accenture.

Artisanal used to mean hand-crafted. Now it means something that is supposed to make you think of a time when things were hand crafted. There's Tostitos Artisan Recipes chips. Starbucks has Artisan Breakfast Sandwiches. And, evidently, now there's Fannie May's FM Artisan chocolates. They are $50 for a box of 25 pieces.

New England Confectionery Co. tied to make a health-conscious Necco wafer with things like cabbage and beets for coloring and natural sweetening. Necco wafer sales fell 35%. "There were stacks and stacks of letters and emails that said, 'Why did you do this? You ruined it,''' recalled Steve Ornell, Necco's vice president of sales.

Kroger Co. said it would discontinue the use of needle-free devices to administer flu vaccines after a Food and Drug Administration statement that such devices have not been approved for that purpose. Kroger pharmacies and locations of The Little Clinic will continue to administer seasonal influenza vaccinations through traditional flu shots, the company said.

As it negotiates a move to downtown Cincinnati, Nielsen wants its name on the Chiquita Center.

From GPS devices to voicemail boxes, most computerized voices are female. The reason likely boils down to psychology. Scientific studies have found that humans prefer the sound of a woman's voice to a man's. The preference begins at an early age, too. Stanford University professor Clifford Nass cites a study in which fetuses react to their mother's voice, but not to other female voices or their father's voice. Another possible reason for all of the female computer voices? Our history, says CNN's Brandon Griggs.