A photo of a young Target employee, taken without his consent, has taken the internet by storm this week.
Who is Alex?
Alex is a 16-year-old boy from Dallas, Texas who has become a walking, talking native ad for Target. Two weeks ago, a teenage girl took a picture of Alex bagging groceries because she thought he was cute and Tweeted it with the #AlexFromTarget. In inexplicably, #AlexFromTarget has taken on a life of its own.
Just how famous is Alex?
Before the now famous picture (i.e. on November 2), Alex had 144 followers on Twitter. Now he has over 664,000 followers, simply due to his boyish good looks. Topsy, Twitter's analytics platform, estimates that there were 1.3 million tweets mentioning Alex From Target between Sunday November 2 and Wednesday November 5. As a result of this phenomenon, Alex has been featured in CNN, the Washington Post and has even made an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
What effects has Alex had on other parties?
A marketing start-up called Breakr claimed that they created this global meme as a social experiment. However, neither Alex nor Abbie, the girl who originally posted the photo, have ever heard of Breakr.
Target has benefited greatly with over 46,000 mentions, mostly from girls. The firm even tweeted "We heart #AlexFromTarget too!" Amobee Brand Intelligence measured a 274% increase in consumption of Target-related content across the web from Sunday (before Alex took off) to Wednesday.
What does this tell us about social media?
We live in a world of people who are "famous for nothing". Alex From Target is the latest example of the phenomena. There is no straightforward explanation of how or why #AlexFromTarget took off. This example illustrates the immense power of viral influences (even the accidental ones) and the effect that social media can have.
Sources:
http://time.com/3554572/alex-from-target/
http://digiday.com/brands/wtf-alex-from-target/
http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/11/alex-from-target-fame.html
http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/should-target-put-alex-actual-ad-campaign-161193
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/did-startup-really-create-alex-target-buzz-or-their-claim-real-hoax-161227
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