Creative Profile: Mads Munk

Scandinavian production guru Mads Munk is a unique force of nature. A career that started by blagging an internship through sheer bravado has ended as head of a suitably ballsy film company/ad agency, M2Group, with a reputation for making ads too sexy for TV. He tells Ryan Watson about his pioneering new creative outlet – a tween girl band inspired by LEGO

Danish production pioneer, Mads Munk, wouldn’t look out of place in a Hollywood movie – as a man you wouldn’t want to say ‘no’ to. He speaks in perfect English carried by a hefty Scandinavian accent and is always immaculately dressed, reflecting the success of his global creative company, M2 Group.

Headquartered in Denmark’s Aarhus with offices in Copenhagen, London and Bangkok, Munk’s company boasts a slew of notable advertising work that has made the global press.

His ad Fleggaard, For The Boys, sees an army of beautiful women in Baywatch red perform an epic topless skydive to promote cross-border shopping and got banned from TV upon release; the company’s two spots for Danish transport service, Midttrafik, based on an entertaining bus ride, went viral. The versatile nature of the company’s work continues to evolve.

From flowerseller to talent bloomer

Munk came from humble beginnings, though he always showed an entrepreneurial streak, selling popcorn and flowers, and working as a bookmaker. But it was his decision to apply for multimedia school that paved the way to his M2 empire.

“You had to do something very unique to get into schools back then. I sent them a photo album with me going to parties and getting drunk,” says the Dane. “They took me on the basis that I was a bit of a wild card, but they liked my energy.”

After 10 months of studying, Munk was required to do an internship but didn’t have any industry connections. He remembers visiting a company called Cat Production and sending a brand new computer he’d bought to their office unannounced, telling the receptionist that he’d be there for three months and was ready to work for free if he was given a shot.

That bold move marked the start of a colourful creative career and soon Munk was working closely with toy giant LEGO on a freelance basis, making CD-ROM material and advertising for the brand. “They asked me to do one commercial and now I think we’ve done around 140 or something like that,” he muses.

In fact, the plastic brick brand has become ever more important for Munk in the last few years as he has overseen the production of the LEGO Friends TV programme, an animated series for young girls, which launched in 2012. Having collected so much material for the show, a few years ago Munk came up with the idea of making a feature-length movie based on the programme, following the story of an animated girl group.

“I discovered that the industry often uses people in their late twenties and thirties for the voiceovers and I didn’t think it was authentic for this project,” he explains. “I wanted to bring it down to the same level as the characters and thought we could do it a different way. I asked so many questions about the ages of the voiceover artists and was a pain in the butt for everybody.”

Munk got LEGO’s blessing and an exciting offshoot project, L2M (Listening to Music), was born in the form of a five-piece pop band made up of 11- and 12-year-old girls. “I thought, why don’t we make our own songs with our own group to see where it would take us? I was introduced to Tim Byrne, who worked with Simon Cowell for over a decade. Simon had just left LA and Tim was looking for a new adventure.”

Munk and music producer Byrne have since opened M&M Talent, an entertainment company based in London, which has been the driving force behind the project. After months of casting in the US last year, L2M is now a genuine act releasing music through Warner, with a strong millennial-style concept developed by agency Hele Vejen’s Christian Dyhr. The unique project symbolises Munk’s desire to go with his instinct and create new things without pigeonholing himself as an ad man. He reveals that he’d love to drop the word ‘film’ from the name of his company and likes to describe his stable as a toolbox from which he can handpick talent according to the job at hand.

Setting sights beyond Scandinavia

Having held a launch event for L2M in New York back in February, the plan is to go worldwide. “When you drive south of Aarhus, you can turn left at Fredericia to Copenhagen but if you continue down for the same distance you’ll reach Hamburg, where there are more people than in the whole of Denmark,” explains Munk. “So why do people have to turn left? I never got it. If you sell cheese or shoes and you’re successful in Denmark, you should sell to the rest of Scandinavia. Or why just Scandinavia? The sky is the limit.”

With Munk’s unbeatable balance of business and ambition, his work will surely continue to break both creative and geographic barriers.