To be honest, I'm usually the one defending OPs against the /r/hailcorporate thing, because I know that brands naturally come up in everyday life. I myself have made reddit posts about Netflix, chickfila, etc, and every single time I get berated for being a shill. I'm not. It's silly.
but
My red flags are up on this one for 3 reasons:
1) I know my redditors, and I have a really hard time believing that a new post with #target wouldn't be immediately Downvoted by the people that browse new. I totally believe this post would be upvoted once on the front page, but I feel that it would have to have paid upvotes to get there.
2) OP is playing this "I'm new to reddit!" thing, which is suspect. They are not new to reddit.
3) Basically all companies try to use reddit for marketing, but there are like 10 companies that really abuse reddit, and target is one of them. I'd go as far as to say that they abuse reddit more than any other company, and I have to believe that they have an agency doing "holiday viral marketing" for them right now. You'll probably remember that they were on the front page like a month ago with the "husband standing outside target with a sign about his wife" nonsense, and that was 100% created and pushed by target.
So yeah, there is always a chance this is legit. But in this case, I'd give a solid 85% chance that this is agency marketing.
Edit: this is the one I'm talking about for point #3:.
JRclarity123 on December 6th, 2019 at 06:38 UTC »
I like this post even though it’s 50 percent likely that it’s just a viral marketing effort by Target.
SolitaryEgg on December 6th, 2019 at 09:02 UTC »
To be honest, I'm usually the one defending OPs against the /r/hailcorporate thing, because I know that brands naturally come up in everyday life. I myself have made reddit posts about Netflix, chickfila, etc, and every single time I get berated for being a shill. I'm not. It's silly.
but
My red flags are up on this one for 3 reasons:
1) I know my redditors, and I have a really hard time believing that a new post with #target wouldn't be immediately Downvoted by the people that browse new. I totally believe this post would be upvoted once on the front page, but I feel that it would have to have paid upvotes to get there.
2) OP is playing this "I'm new to reddit!" thing, which is suspect. They are not new to reddit.
3) Basically all companies try to use reddit for marketing, but there are like 10 companies that really abuse reddit, and target is one of them. I'd go as far as to say that they abuse reddit more than any other company, and I have to believe that they have an agency doing "holiday viral marketing" for them right now. You'll probably remember that they were on the front page like a month ago with the "husband standing outside target with a sign about his wife" nonsense, and that was 100% created and pushed by target.
So yeah, there is always a chance this is legit. But in this case, I'd give a solid 85% chance that this is agency marketing.
Edit: this is the one I'm talking about for point #3:.
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/dfn7o7
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/dxtf51
There were like 3 variations of this, and it was all over reddit. I would legit bet my life savings that target took and posted these pics.
badpj_tha_rapper on December 6th, 2019 at 10:11 UTC »
Bruh I just watched this gain 4k upvotes in 30 sec.