Kutcher keeps the heat with Tweets

Headliner maintains his brand despite recent career missteps

In the last couple of weeks movies starring Bruce Willis, Matt Damon, Jennifer Aniston, Clive Owen and Sandra Bullock have looked downright torpid at the box office while other films featuring clouds and meatballs have performed smartly.

That will get the buzz going again that stars don’t mean as much as they used to -- an argument that will be blown away the moment another star vehicle hits.

The reality, however, is that stars don’t resonate just as actors any more, they are brands that produce multiple revenue streams. Further, the actor-brands must compete with toy brands (like Barbie) or game brands (like Asteroids), so career problems occur, not just when movies tank but when the brand tanks.

Mindful of this, no one has worked harder at brand-building than Ashton Kutcher, who may not be a top movie star but has achieved a curious ubiquitousness across media platforms. I fear I’m the only person in town who doesn’t Tweet with @asplusk (that’s Ashton’s Twitter name).

Yet I can tell that times are tough because even the Ashton machine has hit bumps lately. The TV series he produced, "The Beautiful Life," was the season’s first casualty (it was canceled by the CW). His new movie, "Spread," a sort of poor man’s "Shampoo," disappeared after grossing roughly $250,000 domestically. And Ashton hasn’t opened a new restaurant, club or supermarket in days.

When the restaurant Ashton co-owned, called Dolce, first opened, I had the temerity to walk in at 8 p.m. one night without a reservation. The place was empty. "No one is seated without a reservation," the maitre d’ announced curtly. We left and went to another more hospitable restaurant nearby but, out of curiosity, I checked Ashton’s place 90 minutes later. It was still empty.

"Welcome to the movie star restaurant circuit," I told my wife.

Is Ashton Kutcher in retreat because of all of this? Hell no. Though Ashton was a surprise no-show at last week’s big Twitter conference, he still apparently has more Twitter followers than anyone else. The kid who came to fame because of "That ’70s Show" (he later caused a stir by marrying an "older woman," Demi Moore) is now "the daily seer to nearly 3.7 million followers," according to Tina Daunt of the Los Angeles Times.

His Tweets, she reports, are self-help aphorisms ("a sexy Dr. Phil," Daunt tells us) mixed with "this is what I’m doing" updates. They may not be literature but President Obama reportedly tapped Ashton to help publicize charity projects and Bill Clinton invited him to the annual Clinton Global Initiative gathering, which Ashton live-Tweeted.

Apparently neither the President nor ex-President agree with the decree of Newsweek’s Daniel Lyons that "Twitter is a platform for imbeciles, skeevy marketers and D-list celebrities."

Given the fact that Ashton is both trendy and ubiquitous (he’s also pretty smart), his career clearly is not on the endangered list, even though his film and TV show tanked and his restaurant has disappeared.

Ashton, the brand, however, will be with us for a long time, though agents for less prominent actor-brands report that business is problematic.

I talked with a couple of tenpercenters last week who specialize in the celebrity business -- they book special events, mall openings and the like -- and they say the paydays are getting slimmer. "It’s tougher to cash in on your name," one agent told me. "Being a celeb doesn’t get you much these days -- especially for the senior folks."

Maybe Ashton Kutcher should link the "senior folks" to the Twitter circuit. That is, if he has some spare time.