Once upon a time, I was visiting an agency in the States that had the Mott’s Clamato account. I mentioned to my host that, at the time, the Clamato-based Bloody Caesar had taken Toronto by storm (every Sunday brunch restaurant in the city appeared to have to serve, under civic bylaw, a Caesar with a stalk of celery in it, to every seated diner). But chances of finding a bartender in New York City who’d heard of the stuff, let alone had a bottle behind the bar, were next to nil.

He explained the damned problem with the product: What I called a Bloody Caesar had started out poorly in the States as something the Mott’s people named a Clamdigger. As, in hindsight, nobody wants to drink stuff excreted by clams, you might sell three a week if your bar was within 50 feet of either the Atlantic or the Pacific, but in between, fuggedit.

Then one happy day, a beat-up Clamato salesman was making his last desperation call of the afternoon at a roadhouse in the American Heartland, and as usual, tipped the bartender 10 bucks to make up a Clamdigger with a bottle of Clamato out of his car trunk. The bartender tasted the drink. Not bad, he mused. In fact, not bad at all! Whaddayacallit? The salesman looked down at a menu lying on the bar. The place was called Caesar’s.

It’s called a Bloody Caesar he replied. And the rest is history.

I make a rather tasty Bloody Caesar. In fact, a friend of mine who runs a major oil company comes out into the kitchen when I make one for him, just to see how I do it and why his don’t taste like mine.

If from this slender tale I may, with your permission, assume there is something interesting about making a Bloody Caesar with Mott’s Clamato, in that, if nothing else, it can earn you the admiration of at least one Big Shot, then why are Mott’s Clamato commercials full of bopping ninjas?

Why is their summer radio (okay, it’s for the pre-mixed stuff) all about some ditzy housewife who’s rearranged the furniture for better feng shui so now hubby can’t find the bed (in the garage) or the TV set (on the roof)? Blondie and Dagwood are funnier than this stuff! And they’re not on Mott’s payroll.

There is a very interesting concept I recalled with a vengeance last week, a week I spent slaving on fiendishly complex rotting-beam-replacement projects on our Muskoka place. That fact is, in order to execute a non-reflex action, human beings must mentally envision themselves taking that action, step-by-step, before actually doing anything in real life.

Until I forced myself to imagine how I might remove and replace 75 feet of rotting beams under the 800-square foot sundeck 12 feet up in the air, the purchase of the four-ton hydraulic jack, the acquisition of the rusty nail-cutting grinding wheel, the replacement timbers, and on and on, I simply could not proceed, no matter how desperately I wanted the job to be done.

In other words, I had to imagine deploying a four-ton hydraulic jack, in excruciating detail, under my deck, before going into Bracebridge and laying out 32 bucks for one.

It follows, or I am very much mistaken, that at some point prior to deciding to buy one’s first bottle of Clamato, one must envision oneself making and serving a Bloody Caesar. And if I’m not there, pal, maybe the advertising could step in and lend a little motivational instruction. A nudge.

Just before you sign off on the next wild-and-zany, off-the-wall, so-funny-I-could-be-pulling-down-half-a-million-U.S.-writing-for-Adam-Sandler comedy script for your little brand, think of what the poor bloody consumer has to work through, in the mind, before a purchase makes any sense at all.

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P.S. Here’s another summer admaker’s tip: Construction is painful and dangerous. Destruction is worse. You actually hurt yourself more pulling things apart than you do putting things together. As I am sitting on my cedar deck, pulling out old four-inch nails with a crowbar, my hands and arms are covered in cuts and lesions. The only bandages left are the kids’ Sesame Street variety. Miss Piggy is on my puncture wound, Ernie is on the abrasion, and so on. As it has begun to piss down with rain, I have grabbed a Windermere golf hat from the mudroom shelf to keep the rain off my glasses, which I need to see the nail heads.

Suddenly, big, fresh, red splashes of blood are falling onto the decking, onto my filthy jeans. I am bleeding like a goddamn pig flashes through my brain. This is heart blood, too. The bright crimson stuff that hasn’t circulated your body yet. Jesus, where is it coming from? I check my hands. My chest. My nose. My forehead. Wait a minute! IT’S NOT BLOOD! IT’S COMING FROM THE CHEAP RED GOLF HAT! I AM THE VICTIM OF A CRAPPY PROMOTIONAL ITEM!

I know at least one advertising manager whose idea of upping the communications budget is ordering more hats. But watch the quality control, buddy. You could be hurting yourself. Bad.

Barry Base creates advertising campaigns for a living. He creates this column for fun, and to test the unproven theory that clients who find the latter amusing may also find the former to their liking. Barry can be reached at (416) 924-5533, or faxed at (416) 960-5255, at the Toronto office of Barry Base & Partners.