Alex from Target confirmed as a marketing campaign

HE TOOK over the internet for 36 hours, but everyone’s favourite Target employee was just a marketing stunt.

IT’S official. Everyone’s dream boat Target bag packer was part of a marketing campaign.

Over the last 36 hours, nothing on the internet has been spoken about more than some kid packing a shopping bag. He’s 2014’s Justin Bieber and he works at Target.

While Alex does actually work for a Target in the USA, he was used as nothing more than a marketing pawn for new company Breakr. A “entertainment network” that says it “connects fans to their fandom.”

YOOOOOOOOOO pic.twitter.com/eknsxBlx38

— ⠀ (@auscalum) November 2, 2014

In a blog posted on LinkedIn, Breakr’s CEO Dil-Domine Jacobe Leanoares said that they wanted to test the power of the fan girl demographic by “taking an unknown, good looking kid, and Target employee from Texas to overnight viral internet sensation.”

They did this by getting one of their resident fangirls, who actually lives in the UK, a whole continent away from Alex to post the picture online. Once that was up, they arranged more “fangirl followers” to try and trend #AlexFromTarget with the help of some bigger YouTube influencers.

From there it hit the number one trending topic on Twitter and just about every major site in the world picked the story up.

Around the same time this was all happening, Breakr decided to announce their latest member to the network, a singer Corbyn Besson who also gained thousands of Twitter followers.

If there’s one lesson to be learned from this, as Leanoares points out, it’s that if you can earn the love and respect of a global community such as the ‘fangirl’, you can drive awareness for any cause, no matter what it is.