What we can learn from AlexFromTarget

I heard my teenage daughter talking to a friend yesterday about Alex from Target. Perhaps you haven’t heard about him yet. Earlier in the day, while surfing the net for clients, I ran across the story of this young man who became an overnight Internet sensation when someone tweeted his photo with the word “Yoooooo,” which we are to assume means something positive in teen lingo.

Since then, Alex from Target has his own hashtag and more than 500k followers. I don’t know how many he had before rising to fame, but he’s certainly caught the attention of not only young, swooning female fans, but if his tweets are to be believed, even Ellen DeGeneres has given him a shout-out by writing: “Hey, #AlexFromTarget, it’s #EllenFromEllen." and later had him on her show.

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He’s even inspired copycat Instagram postings of Daquan from Staples, Frankie from Starbucks, Kieran from T-mobile and Josh from Best Buy, to name a few.

There were rumors for a short time that Alex was fired from his job at Target. Untrue. In fact, Target has embraced him with a “We love Alex” tweet of its own.

In the world of advertising and social media, Alex has become to Target what the ice bucket challenge became to fundraising. It only goes to show you how much impact one tweet, one vine, one meme can have, especially when it comes to the younger generation.

There are news stories of girls going to Target with their moms in search of Alex. How this will translate to increased sales for the retailer remains to be seen. One thing is for sure, it certainly can’t hurt the company’s image, which was tarnished following a huge data breach in which up to 110 million customers had their card data or personal information stolen.

As for Alex, this Texas teen seems to be taking all of the attention in stride, simply thanking everyone for all of the positive tweets and promising to post again soon – until then he’s probably gotta get back to work bagging.

Susan R. Miller is founder of Garton-Miller Media, a full-service, South Florida-based public relations firm. Susan is a former journalist with more than 30 years of experience. She has written for local, state and national publications. Her clients include attorneys, non-profit organizations and healthcare professionals.