Face to Face with... Rick Campbell

This week, Amsterdam and New Zealand-based digital production agency Resn’s founder Rick Campbell took to the stage at Appril – a festival held in the Dutch capital to celebrate and discuss everything app-related and mobile.

With impressive recent projects under its belt for Google (Face Arcade), Converse (Street), REI (1440 Project) and currently helping to develop LEAP Motion technology for a new generation of games on new devices, Resn is leading the way in online and social innovation for consumer experiences.

Following his presentation, we caught up with Campbell to hear about the company’s story, its current projects and his own favourite campaigns.

You started Resn in 2004, tell us a bit about the company, why you started it and how it’s been going…

Resn was born from a desire to make amazing, beautiful, detailed, interactive experiences which would stand apart. Creating projects with masters of their craft, collaborating with brilliantly passionate people while having and spreading fun, are important motivators in what we do. Over the nine years of Resn we have moved from the digital streets of the New Zealand music scene to the global world of commercial advertising. We hold the same principles as we began with and strive to make meaningful, memorable experiences that resonate with people. We are believers, fighters and lovers of the interactive web. 

You started out in New Zealand, so why did you choose Amsterdam as the next step and how long have you been there?

We've been here for just over a year now. The desire came from wanting to work with the best creative and digital people in Europe. Amsterdam is an ideal location as it is at the crossroads between Paris, London and Berlin and Amsterdam itself is a creative powerhouse. We also have heaps of friends here and the city is quite stunning.

Leap Motion was a big theme at SXSW this year and we understand you’re developing some projects for the company. Tell us about how you got involved, why you believe in it and anything you can about the technology you’re working on…

We got involved by signing up for their developer programme and then they were nice enough to ship us a few units to cause mischief on. When we received the LEAP units we were excited by the speed in which they read gestures and how the zero latency could be used in games. The games are still under wraps but let’s just say, you might need to start practicing your quick draw and we'll see you at high noon.

And can you tell/show us anything with regards to your work for REI?

REI and BBDO Atlanta came to Resn with an idea to fill an entire day with images. They have a highly engaged customer base that’s turned into an active community for the sharing of quality outdoor photography and they had an idea to give something back.

Resn ran with the idea and created the REI 1440 Project, a minute-by-minute timeline of photography (based on the time the image was shot) that makes up a complete 24-hour period. The goal for the community is to fill each and every minute of this ‘virtual day’ with photography representing their collective love of the outdoors.

The site is a highly visual HTML5 responsive design site that works across desktop, tablet and mobile. The site utilises Facebook connect for easy authentication and sharing, pulls in user’s Instagram photos and utilises almost all of the site data to let you view and filter images on a 24-hour timeline by everything from user to location, hash tag activity and even colour.

The minimal and intuitive design stays out of the way of the images and the user, allowing for an enjoyable browsing experience.

And tell us a bit about your recent game for Converse; how did you get involved and what’s the gameplay like?

Anomaly Amsterdam approached us to design and build the social competition flow and game for the launch of the Converse Start street sneaker across Europe. The idea was to turn the city and streets into an obstacle course where you create your own fun. A sophisticated social challenge flow was adopted to create and encourage peer-to-peer competition. You battle your Facebook friends in a turn-by-turn endless runner game to be king of three different cities: London, Berlin and Milan.

The game is a sideways-scrolling endless runner with a single click or mobile tap mechanic. Jump on and over street obstacles, avoid manholes and get speed boosts. Run as far as you can to get the highest score and crush your friends in a first-to-three-wins challenge. Each city had a soundtrack from Converse's own record label, Rubber tracks. The game is HTML5 and is housed inside Facebook on desktops and mobile phones.

You seem to be working with the US a lot, so why didn’t you choose to set up over there instead of Europe?

We've always been very fortunate with our client relationships and work process in the US and this is in no small part due to a pretty favourable time difference [with New Zealand]. Europe is a little more difficult so having a branch here made perfect sense.

What are your hopes for Resn this year?

This is the year that Resn will continue to bring her approach of creating narratively rich experiential content and style to even more interactive media projects and browser-driven experiences in the ‘Ye Olde Worlde’.

What are your favourite pieces of advertising/marketing/interactive content?

Any of these are top of their game:

Mattress Mick

Leather Warehouse

Mr Spriggs BBQ