Pop-Up Video’s Lesson for Content Creators

Brianne Fleming
4 min readJul 16, 2020

It’s wild to think that TikTok has become a vehicle for people to discover music. Growing up, I turned to traditional media to fuel my passion for music — radio, print, and television.

One TV show I always gravitated toward was VH1’s Pop-Up Video. Although it only aired from 1996 to 2002, there are so many takeaways from this show that we can apply to content creation today.

If you don’t remember Pop-Up Video, it was a mini music video marathon where fun facts would pop up onto the screen. As you watched, you’d learn various things about the musician, the video production, or other relevant factoids.

Here’s an example from the beloved Spice Girls video for “Wannabe”.

My favorite pop-up reveals some Spice Girls history: each member was hand-selected out of 400 women who responded to an ad for a girl group.

A Content Creation Must: Education

The mark of any interesting piece of content is that it serves a purpose. Whether it be to entertain, inspire, connect, or educate, you want to publish content that feeds your audience.

Although the factoids shared on Pop-Up Video are far from academic, they still educate the viewer. These fun facts provide context and insights that make the music video more enjoyable.

From your email campaigns to social content and YouTube videos, incorporating facts is a surefire way to enhance your content. Here’s why:

Facts illustrate your brand’s WHY.

As Simon Sinek always says, start with why. Sharing facts with your audience can illustrate how your company got started.

For instance, after learning that 14 billion pounds of plastic end up in our oceans each year, two friends took action. Andrew Cooper and Alex Schulze created, 4ocean, a company committed to removing plastic from our oceans.

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Brianne Fleming

I write about brands and boy bands. Marketing and social media instructor at UF. Pop culture lover. Host of the Making the Brand podcast. www.briannefleming.com