'Alex From Target,' The Teen Who Went Viral On Social Media, Was All A Marketing Ploy

All good things must come to an end. 

Such is the case with Alex, the good-looking teenager who went viral on social media on Monday. According to CNET's Chris Matyszczyk, however, that was all thanks to a new company, called Breakr. Its purpose is to help small-content creators spread their work.

In this case, it went better than expected. 

Matyszczyk spoke with the company's CEO, Dil-Domine Jacobe Leonares, who admitted that it was all a marketing campaign. 

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

It all started when a Twitter user posted this photo on Sunday. It wasn't her photo, she said, but she wanted to share it. Soon, the tweet started picking up retweets and favorites.

His picture soon went viral, and the hashtag #AlexfromTarget was trending worldwide.

He even went on "The Ellen Degeneres Show" on Tuesday.

 

Leonares explains further in a post on LinkedIn. "We wanted to see how powerful the fangirl demographic was by taking a unknown good-looking kid and Target employee from Texas to overnight viral internet sensation," he writes.

He also says that Target wasn't in on it. "They could have capitalized, though," he told CNET.

Breakr was "controlling both sides of the conversation," fueling the fire of the Alex lovers as well as the haters. In fact, Leonares writes, Alex's Twitter account started out with 2,000 followers. As of this writing, he has 561,000 followers.  

Leonares sums it all up, writing:

After the dust settles, there is a lesson to be made here; from brands, talent agencies, music labels and influencer marketing companies: if you can earn the love and respect from a global community such as the 'Fangirl' demographic - you can rally them together to drive awareness for any cause even if its to take a random kid from unknown to stardom over night.

The brands got us again, folks. And people aren't too happy about it.