The Next Time You’re On National TV, “Joe the Plumber,” Wear a T-Shirt with Your Business’s Logo On It.

Obama describes a nasty clog in his campaign. Photo by Jae C. Hong

TO: Joe Wurzelbacher, above, the Cincinnati, OH-based plumbing contractor that John McCain and Barack Obama mentioned by name 26 times during their debate last night (five times as many Joe Biden!)

Dear Joe:

I believe you have really great business sense. However, if you immediately follow my Seven Tips for Plumbing the Depths of Success, you are going to truly G-off….

1) Get an agent, and a role in the next [Scary, Date, Epic, Disaster, Meet the Spartans] Movie, as this week’s hot topic, next year’s trivia question.

2) Start scooping up invites to all the award shows as a presenter and the presidential inaugural in January (especially if McCain wins.) Come on, dude…14:58…14:57…14:56….

3. Change the name of your company from what is, I’ll venture, a very “businesslike” Ohio Pipes & Plumbing, or whatever, to My Old Buddy Joe The Plumber.

WIFE: (despondent) Honey, look! The toilet overflowed again!
HUSBAND picks up the phone, starts dialing.
WIFE: Who are you calling?
HUSBAND: I’m calling My Old Buddy Joe The Plumber!
WIFE: (brightening up) GREAT! He’ll know what to do!

4. Get Obama and McCain to do commercials, or, better yet, get a local video editor to cut up the debate footage, looping the duo saying your name over and over to the “Genius of Love” beat. Use McCain’s “My Old Buddy Joe The Plumber Out There” as the hook.

5. Thank Barack Obama, John McCain, and thank God, because if you handle this right, get off that couch, right, quit gee-whizzing and aw-shucksing about how amazed you were to hear your name 26 times, and start spinning interviews into a discussion about your business—that’s what Obama did, last night, when he said, “Let me tell you who I associate with…—you’re gonna get a windfall, and you won’t need to figure out how you’re gonna buy that plumbing business.

6. Get to work immediately killing that internet rumor you’re somehow related to one of the poeple implicated in the Keating 5 banking scandal…something to which, incidentally, McCain, who called you out last night, has also been, perhaps dubiously, connected. (Coincidence?)

And, finally:

7. License your likeness. Not a lot of white guys can pull off the bald head. You’re workin’ it buddy. Now you just gotta work some mugs, mouse pads, maybe do some spokesperson stuff for kids…and like I said, T-shirts…. I mean, the first time, with Obama, maybe I could see you being logo-naked.

But the second time? There was no excuse for you appearing in that living room picture, above, without a business phone number across the front of your heather gray joint.

UPDATE: Looks like Joe went backwards in time and took some of my marketing advice, below.

No, seriously: I missed his Good Morning America appearance today. But from the the still frame here…

… it’s clear that, for this TV appearance, America’s favorite pipe handler made sure the pipe wrench logo on his polo short—enlarged in the upper-right-hand circle here—is super-visible.

You’re a star, Joe. Now, remember what I said about asking McCain to do that commercial, when he calls you…and pay your taxes!