Emergent Order co-founder and creative director John Papola is an award-winning director and producer who has been working in short and long-form broadcast TV production for the past decade. His former employers and clients include major networks and brands like Spike TV, Nickelodeon, and MTV as well as creative ad agencies such as Crispin Porter, Razorfish and JWT.
John has been a leader in new media creative production and marketing with a number of viral hits under his belt including the “Look Closer” cross-media campaign for the 2010 Video Game Awards and the Back to the Future viral campaign featuring Michael J. Fox for Spike TV’s Scream Awards which was featured on Entertainment Tonight and garnered over 2.5 million views in 3 days.
Tapping into a strong interest in economics, John teamed up with economist and author Russ Roberts to create EconStories, a new media brand dedicated to re-imagining economics education through creativity and storytelling. John co-wrote, produced and directed two hip-hop music videos about the economy, “Fear the Boom and Bust”, and “Fight of the Century”, which have become global sensations, garnering praise from international press and over 5 million combined views on YouTube. Both videos are being used in classrooms all over the world to breath new life into the dismal science.
John is also an enthusiastic adopter of new techniques and technologies and has an extensive post-production background in editing, compositing and motion graphics. This experience translates into higher production value and visual innovation from concept through final execution.
While a creative director at Spike TV, John played an important role in re-branding of the network as well as the network’s highly successful, industry-leading integrated brand marketing campaigns. The brands for which John has directed campaigns include Unilever’s Axe, Burger King, Geico, Campbells, T-Mobile, Boston Beer, Snickers, Jeep and many more. He is also the creator of Spike’s award-winning pro-social initiative “True Dads in Uniform”, an effort in partnership with the USO to keep our troops overseas connected with their families back home.
Some of John’s other successes include Gold Promax and Broadcast Design Awards for the Jimmy Neutron “Gotta Blast” campaign, which he wrote, produced, edited and directed. He has also been awarded a Silver Broadcast Design Award in the highly competitive “Image Promotion” category for a series of live-action/CGI spots entitled the “Cyber IDs” for the Nicktoons Network re-launch. John produced and directed “The World Cyber Games” series of long-form documentary specials which garnered attention within the industry for it’s face-paced, entertaining look at the world of competitive professional video gaming.
John’s career as a director began at MTV Animation Development where he directed the animated series pilot “The Mall Show”. John then moved to Nickelodeon where he co-created, co-wrote and directed “Robo Ralph”, a story-driven interstitial series as well as numerous promos and commercials since.