Alex From Target / #AlexFromTarget

About

Alex From Target is a nickname given to American teenage cashier Alex Christopher LaBeouf who rose to global viral fame on Twitter for his apparent charming look after an anonymous customer tweeted a picture of him scanning and bagging items at a Target retail store in Texas. Since entering circulation in early November 2014, the hashtag #AlexFromTarget quickly became a worldwide trending topic and went on to inspire several novelty accounts and fan art image macros on Instagram and Tumblr.

Origin

On November 2nd, Twitter user @auscalum^[1] tweeted a picture of a Target employee wearing the name tag “Alex” and bagging items behind the cashier. In the following 24 hours, the tweet gained over 1,000 retweets and 2,000 favorites.^[2]

Spread

Within the 24 hour period on November 2nd, the hashtag #AlexFromTarget was mentioned more than one million times on Twitter^[3] while the keyword “Alex From Target” was searched over 200,000 times on Google.^[4] Soon, Twitter users began looking for information about the subject in the photo, ultimately leading to the identification of his Twitter handle @acl163.^[5] In that same time period, Alex garnered more than 250,000 followers.

On the morning of November 3rd, Target’s official Twitter account posted an image of an employee’s tag featuring the name Alex in support of the overnight phenomenon, which gained over 10,000 retweets and 15,000 favorites in less than six hours.

Viral Marketing Rumors

On November 3rd, Dil-Domine Jacobe Leonares, founder and CEO of the Los Angeles-based startup company Breakr, posted a statement on his LinkedIn^[21] page claiming responsibility for coining the hashtag #AlexFromTarget. The following day, CNET^[20] published an article with additional quotes from Leonares, who continued to maintain that his company worked with @auscalum to spread the story among the “fangirl demographic” on Twitter. Shortly after the CNET article appeared online, @auscalum posted a tweet^[22] denying any involvement with Breakr (shown below, left), which was further backed up by LaBeouf’s tweet^[24] stating that he had never heard of the company (shown below, right).

On November 5th, BuzzFeed published an article titled “There’s No Proof That A Company Was Behind The #AlexFromTarget Meme,” which raised several questions regarding Leonares’ claim of having engineered the viral hashtag in collaboration with @auscalum. The article also cited the CEO’s somewhat toned-down statement regarding the degree of the company’s involvement in the meme-making, who was quoted as saying:

“it was all a chain reaction that Breakr happened to be a part of.”

Appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show

On November 4th, LaBeouf appeared on the talk show Ellen, where he was interviewed by host Ellen DeGeneres about his recent Internet fame.

Notable Examples

Spin-Offs

Kieran from T-Mobile[15]	Frankie from Starbucks[19]	Xian from McDonald’s[18]
Matt from Red Robin[16]	Steve from Starbucks[17]	Betty from Walmart[10]

Search Interest

External References