Why Alessandra’s Role Will Beat Ashton’s

I have never seen an episode of Caprica. I’ve never seen an episode of Battlestar Galactica. Even so, I follow Alessandra Torresani (aka @bambolabambina) on Twitter. She’s fairly interesting, and the reason I find her so is because she absolutely and completely embodies everything about herself as Zoe Graystone in Caprica. Her entire Twitter life centers around being this character, recognizing it, and then by extension showing herself as a normal 22 year old chick playing a Cylon. She refers to her followers as “‘lil cylons.” She responds to her fans on Twitter. She also has nearly 5 million fewer followers than Ashton Kutcher.

In the world of social networking, Alessandra has totally figured out how to be the absolute best marketer possible for her brand – she IS her brand. Ashton, on the other hand, is an already-famous movie star delving into the business of social media, just as other movie stars have gotten into politics and involved in world-events in the past. The difference lies here: Alessandra is Caprica, and Caprica is Alessandra. 

Ashton is Seinfeld – he’s a show about nothing. He’s a smattering of random stuff about all the things he’s up to on any given day. Unfortunately, so are the other 99.999% of Twitter users, including yours truly.

My point is that in the end, I see Alessandra’s role being the successful approach to take for young, up and coming actors and actresses. I also see the PR and marketing folk behind Hollywood pushing for this kind of approach, even when it’s not such a great thing for an established actor/actress who doesn’t want to be typecast (I’m looking at you Tony-Stark-I-Mean-Robert-Downey-Jr).

I’ll never claim to be a “social media expert” or any derivative of such. If you do consider yourself one, I’m interested in your opinion. Go.

UPDATE: Quick disclaimer – I find Ashton Kutcher super funny and totally respect how he uses his influence in the world to do amazingly charitable things. This is simply an example of how fast the internet changes.