When a 15-year-old girl stepped into the checkout line at a Target in Texas, she noticed a mildly attractive 16-year-old boy standing behind the counter, swiping items and placing them in bags. She became hypnotized by his boyish, circa 2012 Bieber charm and sneakily snapped a photo on her phone. The girl posted a photo on her Twitter as a way of sending the picture to her friend. Twitter user @auscalum retweeted the photo to her 21.3K followers, and thus the #AlexFromTarget trending topic was born.
Today, teens have the power to rule the internet. Whether they are taken seriously or not is a whole other story. They tend to making trending topics related to One Direction, or 5 Seconds of Summer, or Miley Cyrus twerking, but we’ve never seen a trending topic related to an attractive Target employee before (aside from when 5SOS dressed up as Target employees and tried to get people to buy their album). So was this really just a teenaged fan girl trend of the week or was it a Target publicity stunt?
After the #AlexFromTarget epidemic was well underway, the official Target Twitter account posted a photo depicting a Target nametag reading “Alex” with the caption, “We love Alex too! #AlexFromTarget.” Is there someone high up in the Target world who wanted more publicity?
With Target’s recent year of sales lacking, it is most likely a correct theory that this was all just a Target publicity stunt. And it’s a pretty good one at that! If you have a cute face to go with a brand name, people are drawn to it, therefore they’ll shop at your store because they just want a glimpse of the cutie behind the register. Alex’s appearance at the store can boost sales! This is definitely what the marketing team must be thinking! Even if it didn’t start off as a publicity stunt for the store, but just a little photo posted by a little girl, it’s still genius. Why not sit back and watch Alex from Target take the social media world by storm? Why not have him wear his Target uniform on the Ellen Show? Why not let this kid be a brand name without him really knowing it?!
This past week, Alex from Target beat out Ed Sheeran in the headlines. Sheeran was proposed to by a terminally ill fan (with a ring and everything!), and he said yes! Ed Sheeran is making dreams come true and ripping apart the hearts of people around the world, yet Alex from Target still beat him out on the Twitterverse.
Again, how could Target not be using this to their advantage? A teenager who they employ from Texas is shooting to the top of the list of trending topics on Twitter, beating out one of the most beloved human beings on the planet. The Target marketing team must be sitting back in their chairs at the Target headquarters watching all that is Alex from Target unfold. They must be thinking this kid will bring them loads of new business because everyone wants a peek at the real Alex from Target.