46 sixty minutes

THE BULLETIN March 2010

Who are you?I’m a jack of all trades in a sense. My

father wanted to have a civil engineer in the family, so I did mathematics and then studied civil engineering at university. After failing the same year twice, I met my wife who is an engineer. I married her and thereby solved the problem of having an engineer in the family. It has provided me with a civil engineer’s mind though, I think. After that, I studied advertising at Saint-Luc

and launched my own agency during the four-year course. Funnily enough, some of my classmates did their intern-ship at my own company. It was all very surreal because I was also doing my military service at the same time. My captain would hand me faxes received from my ad agency while I’d be cut-ting out newspaper articles about the Belgian army. I wish I’d filmed that time back then – it would’ve made a hilarious movie.

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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 to look at what I was doing at the time. I was still running my own advertis-ing agency and my clients included Belgian clothing retailer Superconfex and Korean car company Daewoo. I learnt that in order to be good at cre-ating advertising campaigns, you had to look beyond the actual product. Say you’re making a commercial for Daewoo and the basic script idea is a woman getting out of bed and into her car. In order to make this ad, you need to understand women, what type of hair does she have and what clothes is she wearing. You need to understand architecture because you have to select a house that suits the woman’s personality and fits the car. You need to understand art because 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 to create a coherent story you have to reach across different disciplines, something that many ad agencies don’t do. Plus, as an agency, you tend to be very limited in your movement. It’s reactive: you get a briefing but you can’t comment on the actual product. 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

Re-renaissance manIs it an arts collective, an ad agency or a creative think tank? An

independent organisation or a money-making brand machine? Nina

Lamparski asks Addictlab founder Jan Van Mol what exactly his

visionary company does

THE SMART ISSUE

Art imitating life: a truck built out of cardboard by Kasi Custom Rides, three Addictlab members from Soweto, South Africa. Their work will be shown at the Miart fair in Milan and at the artbygeneva fair in Geneva. Visit www.sowetolab.com for more info

48 sixty minutes

THE BULLETIN March 2010

‘Let’s research!’ I invited friends work-ing in advertising and as art directors to contribute to the first Addict maga-zine. The research areas could focus on anything from movies to love or what-ever. My friends then brought their photographer friends who in turn brought stylists; the stylists brought fashion designers; and so on. Because of the open-source concept of this magazine, it started to develop its own identity and dynamic.”

And then?In the late 1990s I decided to sell

my agency and instead began to do customised Addict projects for com-panies. We were approached by brands like Lee Cooper, Nike and Diesel who wanted to feature in the magazine and reach our readership. But they initially misunderstood our concept. When I told Nike that I wasn’t interested in having an ad in the magazine, they were like, “Wait, what did you say?” So I went to London for a face-to-face meeting and to explain how Addict worked. They would tell us about their

latest collection. In return for a fee, we would then bring people together from our database to create a whole experience around the concept and find a language that would work with the magazine’s vision. Instead of an ad, you would see for example a project done with some fashion designer on page 15 and a project done with Nike on page 16. There is nothing sublimi-nal about it: if there’s a brand involved, we’ll tell you about it in the content page. It’s very transparent.

Can you tell me a bit more about the creative process?

Nike wanted to create something for the 2004 Olympic Games in London. The company was sponsoring a sprint champion so we created an indoor track on canvas and she was running on the canvas while wearing red Nikes. The only think you see is the steps on the canvas. We recreated what she was doing as an athlete and turned it into an art piece.”

Cool. But the magazine wasn’t enough for you, was it?

I felt that it wasn’t going far enough. For me the visual stopping power of the images weren’t the end process – it’s what hides behind them. So I decided to not only use magazines as an output but also launch exhibitions and find so-called lab members to physically come to the space and display their projects. You as the reader suddenly have differ-ent tools to grasp a creative idea. You can see it in the magazine, but you can also come to the exhibition open-ing, talk to the designer, have a cup of coffee with them, touch the fabric... This all added different aspects to the story. But it was a very challeng-ing moment: how do you go from being a magazine publisher to a crea-tive laboratory without leaning too much towards fashion or design or advertising?

What’s the business model?We’re consultants not an agency. We

have an equal partnership with brands. We create a bridge between companies

or cities needing innovation and 4000 creative minds or lab members around the world, from Brussels to Soweto. We mostly create lab topics for research ourselves but sometimes they’re com-missioned, like the ‘broom lab’. Let’s face it – I would’ve never come up with that myself. A company wanted us to do research on the next generation of household cleaning products. The key for conceptual thinking is that you need people who have nothing to do with the project as such. If you design a broom and you want to think out of the box conceptually, you need people who know how to clean, you don’t need people who know how to design a broom.

Who owns the ideas?On the one hand, we officially hire

people from our database to work on a commissioned project. Ideas gener-ated during these brainstorming ses-sions obviously belong to the client. But at the same time I will put up the briefing online without giving the company’s name or any further detail. People send in their ideas, which get stored in a confidential database. During the business meeting I present the client with two separate propos-als: those they have paid for and those they haven’t paid for. I make them sign an agreement that they are not allowed to use any ideas sent in via the website without directly talking to the owner.

No wonder you’re featured in our Smart section. Sadly we’re running out of time. Can you quickly share your favoured project?

When I was in Soweto, three guys sent me an email saying, “We believe you can be the gateway to our suc-cess”. There was an image attached of a car made out of cardboard. These guys are trained car designers who use cardboard and their hands to create replicas. It blew my mind. But what do you do with that kind of knowledge? I’ll bringing it to art fairs in Milan and Geneva. The cars are being shipped as we speak.”

THE SMART ISSUE

In shortJan Van Mol was born in Belgium,

lived in South Africa and currently

resides in Geneva. In 1997, the

former advertising executive launched

Addict magazine, which quickly

grew into today’s Addictlab concept.

The huge global database is made

up of 4000 creative talents – from

fashion designers, photographers and

scientists, to sculptors, cooks and

graphic artists – who, through ad-hoc

interdisciplinary collaborations, help

brand companies, NGOs, cities and

even government departments. The

results of their commissioned and

independent works are displayed at

art fairs, galleries, as well as in Addict

books and magazines.

www.addictlab.com