• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 2, 2015

Monster.com, a brand long associated with Super Bowl advertising, may not have been in this year’s game, but that didn’t stop it from running a Super Bowl tie-in, albeit via social media. In an eye-catching tweet intended to get attention from an apparent faux pax, Monster tweeted a congratulatory note to Seattle for “winning the Big Game” on Twitter.

The punchline, noted in fine print at the bottom of the graphical tweet, featured a “social media” job search query, followed by the copy, “No matter why you’re looking for a new job, we can help you find better.”

And then in even finer print: “(Congrats New England!)”

Presumably, Monster’s social media manager won’t be looking for a new job anytime soon, as the tweet achieved exactly what it was looking for: strings of tweets of people who either got the joke, or realized it subsequently.

By this morning, Monster shop BBDO NY was estimating the Twitter ad placement had generated more than 5,000 tweets, a more than 1,500% increase over Monster’s normal daily mentions on Twitter. While those aren't exactly Super Bowl ratings, Monster probably didn't pay $4.5 million to run its ad on Twitter.