Evidently our nation is hungry for more than a daily dose of gloom and doom. And there's nothing like bacon to take your mind off of a sour economy, a dour war, and a generally overall glower.

So take 2 pounds of bacon, 2 pounds of sausage, a hint of dry rub, and a slathering of your favorite BBQ sauce, and what do you get? About 80,000 Google search results, international exposure for your little bacon web site, and a stressed out server barely able to handle the spike in global traffic.

Here's just a sampling of the publicity blitz for this meat feast:

- NYTimes – The Bacon Explosion - Take Bacon. Add Sausage. Blog

- U.S. News & World Report – Bacon Explosion: An Artery-Clogging Example Of Web 2.0 Strategies

- International Herald Tribune – Bacon explosion

- The Huffington Post – Bacon Explosion Recipe Sweeps The Internet

- The State – Bacon Explosion: Ultimate comfort food?

For the record, our office is torn. Half experiences chest pains just looking at it. The other half wipes the drool from their mouths.

(Also for the record, photos taken from BBQaddicts.com )

The first rule of advertising is... you do not use metaphors your target audience won't understand. (Well, at least it's in the top 5.)

So with that rule in mind, let's consider the latest campaign for "Guitar Hero," featuring a slew of pop culture icons playing air instruments in their skivvies – a la "Risky Business." Our random sampling shows that 10 out of 10 teenagers have no idea why Michael Phelps in his underwear is relevant to a video game.

Which brings us to another important rule of advertising. When you miss what you're aiming for, it always leaves a mark.

If you're like me, you've been glued to the television watching the BCS play out the final games of the season. And if you're like me, your curiosity has been piqued with an ad that features some of sports greatest icons – including Muhammad Ali. But here's the catch, the ad is for "G." That's it. No web site is given, no logo, no product name. Just G.

After seeing the ad for the fifth time and trying to guess what it could be for – one guess was for Gillette as they have a similarly styled G. I was driven to the web for a little investigation and Googling "G" didn't get me very far.

Turns out the ad is for the new Gatorade G. Interesting. While the ad got me off the couch and in front of my computer, I am left wondering why Gatorade dropped a name that has recognition, value, and power.

What do you think? Smooth move for a brand-new Gatorade or a big mistake for an iconic brand? Or am I just out of the loop – do athletes actually refer to Gatorade as G (think WaMu for Washington Mutual)?