John Kearse thought he’d made a hit. It was January 2003 and Kearse, then a copy writer at Boston advertising agency Arnold Worldwide, had helped design Monster.com’s ad spot for the upcoming Super Bowl.

In the humorous commercial, an unmanned 18-wheeler tore through a corn field and blew up a gas station while an unemployed truck driver sat in a diner. “Somewhere a trucking company needs a driver,” a narrator said. “Somewhere a driver needs a job. That’s where we come in.”