THE BULLETIN  March 2010 THE SMART ISSUE
46 sixty minutes 47
Re-renaissance man
So far I’ve followed you. Now, what
exactly is Addictlab?
It started as a magazine back in 1997,
but to understand the concept we need
Is it an arts collective, an ad agency or a creative think tank? An
to look at what I was doing at the time.
independent organisation or a money-making brand machine? Nina
I was still running my own advertis-
ing agency and my clients included
Lamparski asks Addictlab founder Jan Van Mol what exactly his
Belgian clothing retailer Superconfex
and Korean car company Daewoo. I
visionary company does learnt that in order to be good at cre-
ating advertising campaigns, you had
to look beyond the actual product.
Who are you? and launched my own agency during Say you’re making a commercial for
I’m a jack of all trades in a sense. My the four-year course. Funnily enough, Daewoo and the basic script idea is
father wanted to have a civil engineer some of my classmates did their intern- a woman getting out of bed and into
in the family, so I did mathematics ship at my own company. It was all very her car. In order to make this ad, you
and then studied civil engineering at surreal because I was also doing my need to understand women, what
university. After failing the same year military service at the same time. My type of hair does she have and what
twice, I met my wife who is an engineer. captain would hand me faxes received clothes is she wearing. You need to
I married her and thereby solved the from my ad agency while I’d be cut- understand architecture because you
problem of having an engineer in the ting out newspaper articles about the have to select a house that suits the
family. It has provided me with a civil Belgian army. I wish I’d filmed that woman’s personality and fits the car.
engineer’s mind though, I think. After time back then – it would’ve made a You need to understand art because
that, I studied advertising at Saint-Luc hilarious movie. there will be a painting hanging above
the bed in the commercial and it once
again reflects the woman who in turn
reflects the choice of her car. It’s all very
subliminal. Importantly, in order

Art imitating life: a truck
to create a coherent story you have
built out of cardboard by Kasi
to reach across different disciplines,
Custom Rides, three Addictlab
something that many ad agencies
members from Soweto, South
don’t do. Plus, as an agency, you tend
Africa. Their work will be
shown at the Miart fair in
to be very limited in your movement.
Milan and at the artbygeneva
It’s reactive: you get a briefing but you
fair in Geneva. Visit www.
can’t comment on the actual product.
sowetolab.com for more info
That’s when I began to think about the
Addictlab concept: I wanted to create
a creative hub that was proactive and
research things and topics without
relying on a client’s brief.
Aha. What was the next step?
I wanted to put together a magazine
that reflected this proactive way of
researching, where the pages showed
the work in progress and also marked
the beginning of the creative proc-
ess, not the end product. My idea was
that the editorial board should not
be locked up behind closed doors in a
stuffy office but out in the real world.
I didn’t want there to be a distance
between the editors and the reader.
So I simply opened the doors and said
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