Soapbox 2025: Chris Walts on Social Media as an Artistic Medium
Our LBB community is buzzing with ideas, opinions and visions for a better advertising industry. So this year, we invited you to dig out your megaphone and climb onto our figurative soapbox to share your hopes for 2025: what change do you want to see? How can the inner workings of the industry improve? How should it adapt to the tech, social, cultural, economic, and political shifts shaping the market?
Taking the mic this time is Chris Walts, head of strategy at Ogilvy Netherlands, who argues that social media is the “defining cultural canvas of our time.” Get a crash course on the storytelling techniques of theatre, TV, and online platforms, while he appreciates the unique artistic potential of social media.
It’s Time to Give Social Media the Respect It Deserves as an Artistic Medium
While the world obsesses over AI, a quieter revolution is underway. Social media, once dismissed as a frivolous place for memes, has blossomed into a powerful new art form – the defining cultural canvas of our time. But are we truly recognising its artistic potential?
Despite its ubiquity and impact, we still treat social media as a repository for repurposed ideas rather than a fertile ground for original creation. This is exacerbated by inexperienced social media practitioners whose critiques, like ‘it just doesn’t feel social,’ offer little insight into why content resonates (or doesn't) with online communities. To truly elevate social media, we must understand its unique power, its compelling nature and its creative divergence from traditional mediums.
One of the oldest ways of telling stories is through theatre. In theatre, a story unfolds in front of an audience, but the viewer has complete control of where they want to look. While the staging is always fixed, the live element of a production and the lack of a viewing frame means each audience member can shape their own theatrical experience as well as potentially influencing the experience of those around them.
In order to maintain the integrity of the narrative, audience participation is often limited, and light and sound are used to focus the audience’s attention and ensure they’re looking at the right things. This helps keep a show running on time and creates a consistent contextual meaning night after night so that multiple audiences can have similar theatrical experiences. As shows are staged live, the immediacy of live performance presents unique storytelling challenges, and more fantastical production elements often require a suspension of disbelief rather than being physically present.
Unlike theatre, film and television’s ability to move locations and deploy CGI allows them to deliver more diverse narrative tactics and tell more complicated stories. One of the most powerful narrative devices is the cut/edit. Our brains are trained to create meaning between two unconnected shots. For instance, if we cut from someone at the base of a mountain to its peak, we infer a journey has happened. Or if we cut from a gun in a box to a close-up of someone’s eyes, we may infer they are thinking about the gun in the box. As a result, an incredible amount of dramatic and comedic tension is created and released through clever editing.
However, unlike theatre, the viewing experience is passive and within a set viewing frame. The audience may comment on what they are seeing as they are watching it, but what they see in the story and its contextuality are fixed. Any reactions or fan extensions of the narrative remain separate from the production itself.
Part of what makes social media such a different creative medium is the way it fuses and elevates traditional storytelling techniques, framing devices, audience participation and even the meaning of the experience. For instance, the shift to vertical video (9:16) has profoundly impacted storytelling tactics. Creators leverage the extra space for stacked videos, concurrent narratives, and interactive elements, catering to shorter attention spans and mobile consumption. Think of the ‘duet’ feature on TikTok, where users respond to and build upon each other's videos, creating a collaborative and evolving narrative.
Because social media is participatory at its core, the full meaning of the creative idea often exists beyond the confines of the asset itself. The act of publishing something on social isn’t the end of the creative process. It’s the midway point. The creative intent of the publisher quickly gives way to the creative interpretation of any interested viewers. Someone may publish about ‘how to be demure at work’, but people’s reaction to the video is more important to the meaning of the idea than the initial content itself. This means that, on social, there isn’t just one creative idea, but a collection of co-owned ideas stemming from the initial inspiration. This participatory nature, combined with unique formats, memes, trends and interactive storytelling, allows social media to engage audiences in ways never before possible.
The final major difference is that other mediums don’t need to advertise the content in the asset itself. People actively set aside time to watch films or shows because they want to be entertained by something they know aligns with their interests. On social, people are looking to escape their current moment, but they don’t often know what they’re looking for – they just want a pleasant distraction. This means social content not only needs to align with someone’s interests, it also needs to be interesting enough to capture and hold their attention. The medium truly is more powerful than the message.
Social media clearly diverges from traditional forms of artistic expression. It employs unique narrative structures, storytelling tactics, and audience engagement methods, all while needing to promote itself within a constantly evolving digital landscape. Its differences, however, are what make it so uniquely compelling and powerful. But to fully appreciate its artistic potential, we must move beyond simplistic creative dismissals and engage with social media critically. We need to study social media’s unique narrative craft, analyse its cultural impact, and engage with the creators and communities who are shaping this evolving medium.
By fostering thoughtful discussion and rigorous critique, we can elevate social media from a source of fleeting escapism to a recognised and respected art form within the industry, capable of profound cultural impact.
