During the Super Bowl, JCPenney sent out four tweets. The first tweet hinted they were putting on mittens. The second was completely garbled and got retweeted at a rate of 50 tweets per second, and 20,000 times. Immediately people thought JCPenney had a drunk intern at the keyboard, prompting brands like Coors Light and Snickers to chime in with advice. The third tweet, also garbled, gained 20,000 retweets. And finally, the last tweet revealed the culprit: the mittens. Today, the hashtag #TweetingWithMittens lives on. It’ being used daily (62,986 times to date) by users everywhere to mean fumbling your words.

When it was all said and done, #TweetingWithMittens made JCPenney the 2nd most mentioned brand on social media platforms the night of the Super Bowl, trailing only Budweiser, who spent $8million while we spent $0. It hoisted the brand to the 5th most mentioned user on Twitter during the game, only behind the Seahawks, Broncos, The NFL and Bruno Mars – the halftime show. And with 254,751,253 positive media impressions, #TweetingWithMittens even ended up on Buzzfeed’s list of “The Only Super Bowl Ads Worth Watching” despite not being a commercial at all. As for the mittens, sales jumped by 105%.