Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Alex From Target Not Quite What He Seemed, Viral Marketing Company Takes Credit (Update)

UPDATE: Nov. 4 -- Like many teenage heartthrobs, Alex from Target may be too good to be true. He is from Target, but it appears his image didn't became a viral sensation by chance.

The CEO of a marketing company called Breakr is claiming to have engineered the whole Alex from Target phenomenon as "a way to see how powerful the fangirl demographic was," according to a post on LinkedIn.

Dil-Domine Jacobe Leonares, Breakr's CEO, wrote on LinkedIn that one of the company's "fangirls" who lives in the United Kingdom posted Alex's photo on Twitter and the company -- which claims to help connect "fans to their fandom" -- encouraged the other fangirls to share Alex's photo using the #AlexFromTarget hashtag. The company doesn't specify whether the fangirls are paid or just devoted followers.

"Truly, we never thought it'd go this far, but it proved that with a strong fan base and rally the fangirls, you can," Leonares told Cnet.

Target, which initially embraced Alex's new-found fame on Monday, says it wasn't in on the gag. The company released a statement Tuesday night, emphasizing that the company has no affiliation with Breakr and that the retailer "had absolutely nothing to do with the creation, listing or distribution of the photo."

"We value Alex as a team member and from the first moment we saw this photo beginning to circulate, we shared that the Target team was as surprised as anyone," the statement reads.

Though Leonares told CNet that Alex did give permission to have his photo taken by a local fangirl, it's unclear if Alex knew where the photo would end up.

Breakr didn't immediately return requests for comment from The Huffington Post.

EARLIER: For most teenage stars, the rise to fame comes from a combination of stage parenting and a talent for singing, acting or just looking cute.

But thanks to the Internet, one teenager just became famous for bagging groceries.

Meet “Alex from Target.” Those three words encompass basically all we know about him: His name is Alex (at least according to his Target name tag), he works at Target, and he has the boyish good looks of a young Nick Carter, Justin Bieber or any other teenage heartthrob with wispy blonde hair.

Twitter user @auscalum posted a picture of him Sunday afternoon, and the Internet took notice. A Twitter account with the bio “Official Alex from Target” now has 346,000 followers and counting. Another Twitter account, which tweeted for the first time 15 hours ago and also claims to be affiliated with Alex, has 24,000 followers.

You can also find Alex from Target on Tumblr, Facebook and as a title character in a teenage romance-style fan-fiction.

Target is embracing the teen’s newfound fame, and presumably some extra attention from the youngs can only be a good thing for a brand that’s working to win back its mojo. Long adored by middle-class shoppers looking for chic clothes on the cheap, Target has suffered in recent years thanks to a declining interest in big box stores and a massive credit card hack last year.

The chain is looking to win customers back by highlighting designer collaborations and exclusive toy lines this holiday season, Fortune reported last month. Like Walmart, Target is also expanding its line of smaller format stores to lure urban customers.

But maybe all it takes is a cute teen employee?

“Imagine our surprise yesterday when one of our Target team members managed to flood the Internet with images of red and khaki without even trying,” Molly Snyder, a spokeswoman for Target, wrote in an email. “We are proud to have a great team, including #AlexFromTarget.”

She added that out of respect for his privacy, the company isn’t revealing the location of Alex's store or making him available for interviews right now.

Like hundreds -- if not thousands -- of teenage girls, HuffPost is still waiting for Alex to respond to messages sent to his Twitter and Facebook accounts. Here are a few tweets from the account that claims to be the "Official Alex":


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