What's the matter, Hun?

It might be hard for irony-loving adlanders to accept, but Hun [short for Hunni and a misspelling of hon] culture is so much more than a leopard print jumpsuit and a warm flute of train station prosecco - it’s a full-blown subculture filled with joy, glamour, grit, and feminine resilience.

Used wisely, this distinctly British trend can be a powerful way of connecting with historically ignored audiences. Used lazily, it slips into caricature, excluding rather than embracing.

It’s too fabulous to be flattened into a mood deck - and brands should know better than to try. Advertisers who want to tap into it should take their cues from the late, great Kim Woodburn.

She had the heels. The trademark bouffant hair. The fake nails. The lip gloss. But most of all, she was brave.

Woodburn wasn’t fast-tracked into fame like your average reality TV star; she earned it through sheer graft. She was 60 years old and working as a cleaner for a Sheikh in Kent when she was approached to take part in the noughties hit show “How Clean Is Your House?”.

Before then she had left an abusive household aged 15 and worked her way up as a live-in-cleaner and beautician. Famed for her unfiltered quips, and penchant for dramatically holding people to account, she gained equal parts notoriety and appreciation.

She may not have called herself a “hun”, but Woodburn embodied precisely the unapologetic, ground-up spirit the memes represent.

And Woodburn was not just a participant in Hun culture - she is one of its icons. As The Gate’s chief strategy officer, Kit Altin explains: “Culture is famously hard to define, but with hun culture, what we have is very specifically a subculture. It has its own tribe, its own language, its own artefacts and totems and people to focus on and things like that.”

Far more than just an amusing meme, Woodburn was a towering hun totem (with platform heels) for all that the subculture symbolises.

Uniquely British, Hun culture icons are distinct from the US idea of "basic bitch" because they are mouthier, more unhinged, less preened and ultimately more relatable. Think Gemma Collins hugging trees, Katie Price and the saga of her pink Range Rover, or Hackney MP Diane Abbott sipping M&S tinnies on the Overground.

The evolution of the Hun

Hun culture’s glittery roots can be traced back to drag acts like Danny La Rue and the cabaret queens and bingo halls of working class nightlife.

Rising into its current, wholesome form from the ashes of 90s Ladette culture (in which women put their finger up to the patriarchy with brash booze-fuelled behaviour), Hun culture is about relatable femininity, which eschews the hierarchical markers associated with traditional ideas about elegance, as writer Hannah Ewens detailed in Vice.

It rose to fame around 2012 with the Twitter handle @uokhun. Eventually Radio 1 host Nick Grimshaw began to use the phrase with regularity, and it became a camp, celebratory in-joke poking loving fun at mainly reality stars.

And Hun culture is so linked with the drama of reality telly and the elevation of everyday icons that it is perhaps best encapsulated by the television channel ITV. The broadcaster has positioned itself as 'the Home Of The Huns' with a dedicated rail across its ITVX platform filled with programming such as TOWIE, Loose Women, Absolutely Fabulous and more.

Its recent report 'Hey Hunni: Your Ultimate Guide To Hun Culture' found that 11.8 million people in the UK have the 'hun culture' mindset. The report defines hun culture as "a form of entertainment that centres around the idea of ‘Hun’, ‘Hon’ or ‘Hunni’, a frivolous and camp personality and attitude that is most commonly found in reality TV, Soaps, Entertainment and Daytime telly.”

Tifany Pugh, digital producer at ITV for Loose Women adds: “Hun Culture is the really relatable moments in life. For me, I think of things like leopard print and cheap bottles of wine.”

The broadcaster's director of client strategy and commercial marketing Kate Waters adds that so central is the Hun to ITV's DNA that it goes as far back as 1966 when Coronation Street's Bet Lynch first came on air and unleashed her raunchy tongue, leopard print attire and beehive hairstyle in the living rooms of a swinging nation.

The Instagram account loveofhuns effectively charts the hun culture conversation - from memes based on hit shows, to showcasing TOWIE's Gemma Collins collaborating with the Trainline website.

Meanwhile in addition to working with brands, Hunsnet, founded by Gareth Howells, hosts regular bottomless brunches at the Shoreditch Boxpark for its prosecco-obsessed fans, such is its current resonance.

A Glittery Resistance

But while it might seem like a frivolous movement on the surface, Hun culture should be seen as a type of resistance - a middle finger to the bland and stuffy, a laugh that's too loud and not remotely embarrassed. As the essayist and critic Susan Sontag notes in her essay 'Notes On Camp': “Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges, the object.” So it comes as little surprise that brands have become keen to use the trend to tap into previously underrepresented audiences.

Altin explains that when The Gate was given the brief of helping to raise the profile of the retailer Very Group, they immersed themselves in the organisation's culture and history as well as drawing on customer data, and immediately drew a link with hun culture. 

They created a new brand platform for the fashion part of the business entitled 'Haus Of Flamingo' - complete with a set of pink, sparkly, and flamingo-filled, fashion-focused spots. The autumn film showed models parading around the grounds of a country house, while the spring film transformed the airport into a catwalk, and the summer spot saw the girls take to the beach.

Altin paints the key demographic the team identified in their research as 35-50-year-old women, often running households on tight budgets, while being thrifty about their next holiday, juggling children and still unafraid to put a bold look together and enjoy the occasional cocktail or prosecco with the girls. “They’re really imaginative. They’re really creative. They’re just about finding the glitter in what can be quite tough situations,” she explains.

Very Group’s head of brand, Katie Kinchin-Smith adds that since establishing Very’s master brand in Christmas 2023, the aim has been to “achieve an aspirational brand that is also relatable and doesn’t take itself too seriously”.

Fittingly, The Gate won the original pitch with the line "Let's Make It Sparkle'. Owned by Littlewoods, Very is a Liverpool-based former catalogue brand whose ethos is shaped by its heritage. Altin explains that when the group approached them, their campaigns had been inconsistent. As both a retail and financial service, Very’s fashion offering and Very Pay - its most important business segment - were operating separately and very clearly needed a reboot.

To tackle this, Altin and The Gate team visited Very's offices, housed in an aircraft hangar in Runcorn, where they immediately sensed that the environment was "big energy, big ambition, very extra". Combined with insights revealing that the decline of catalogues was largely due to snobbery and the undervaluing of mainly women shopping for their homes, as well as the rise of online shopping, the maximalist and grassroots spirit of Hun culture emerged as a perfect fit for both agency and client.

And if minimalism is understated, Hun culture is the opposite. As influence manager at the T&P-owned PR agency Halpern, Liam Boyle puts it: “Abundance and sensory overload are at the core of Hun culture.”

Take the BBC’s billboard celebrating the most operatically camp contestant from this year’s series of The Traitors, Linda (who gained fame for her overacting during her stint as one of those chosen to be a traitor), shown in a sparkly golden jacket award holding up a mock golden cloak award.

“I think the hun likes do themselves up. Big hair, big make up, jewellery, old prints. They’re definitely camp,” adds Boyle.

Selling Hun: how can advertisers avoid alienating?

In 'Notes On Camp' Sontag warns that camp loses its power when it becomes overtly commercial because it removes the playful element - rather like the poser at the party who looks like a Hun because they've bought the attire, but is a complete and utter vibe-less bore.

As brands will always capitalise on subculture until it gets detrimental - the real question is how can businesses looking to channel some hun energy avoid being that sellout that doesn't get another invite?

And Linda from The Traitors is just one of many huns who have been commercialised in the past year. Following the Christmas episode of Gavin and Stacey, a campaign for McDonald’s by Leo Burnett featured Alison Steadman as Pamela in a relatable spot as part of its efforts to place more focus on its Stormzy deal.

"Mixing the iconicity of Stormzy with the familiar, camp enthusiasm of Pam allowed us to make sure everyone was invited to try 'The Stormzy Meal'. Hun culture and its celebration of all things unfiltered is a tool that can bring a smile back to the face of the nation,” explains Leo Burnett’s chief creative officer Mark Elwood.

The same enthusiasm comes centre-stage in Easyjet's Eurovision partnership which began in 2024. This year agencies T&Pm and Dept marked the partnership with a glitzy spot and a collaboration with drag queen Ginger Johnson - perfectly in keeping with the brand's focus on affordable flights and fun escapism.

While Hun culture is ripe for use in relatable brands and pop-focused contexts such as The Traitors, Easyjet or McDonald’s, ITV’s cultural strategist Lucy Irving explains that Hun culture’s usage can be much broader: “You can go full Hun, you can throw in Gemma Collins or you can tap into more universal things and lean into it that way”.

Her ITV colleague Kate Waters, director of client strategy and commercial marketing, adds that Hun culture leans towards “beauty brands, the feminine, low and less luxury prices”. She believes that non-luxury brands can “absolutely” play in the space too, but only as they maintain awareness as a celebration of all things “distinctly British and things that are less celebrated by the establishment”.

Showcasing the subculture’s versatility as a tool to celebrate value, multiple supermarkets have tapped into Hun culture. As well as Lidl, which starred EastEnders and Love Actually actress Martine McCutcheon in a sparkle-filled ad, Waitrose created its own hun-inspired spot based around the S Club song “You’re My Number One” to celebrate its premium No.1 range.

Wonderhood Studios' creative director Amy Downes explains that the work was a response to an ongoing brief from Waitrose to “democratise their offering and show people that it’s not necessarily out of their price point”. 

To mitigate the risk of being perceived as mocking, she explains that from the outset they were aware that they “needed to create a moment of celebration but without mocking”.

"As it’s known as a brand that is posh and premium, it feels lofty for them to tap into that. We made a call to make our own version of the track, and we didn’t make fun of S Club,” Downes adds.

The damage that can take place when a subculture is used but then discarded and mocked is encapsulated in the story of the Burberry cap:

The iconic Nova Check pattern had long been used in the lining of the luxury brand’s coats and later its scarves, and across the brand’s ready-to-wear collection. It was once associated with the country and Sloane sets (an upper middle class look associated with an aspirational mix of country and urbane aesthetics) but after raking in the profits of a more popular buzz, during the New Labour era it was derided as an item of “chav” and football hooligan culture (so much so that the brand stopped producing Nova Check caps).

Unsurprisingly, Burberry’s decision to bring back the check pattern was derided as hypocritical, serving as a stark reminder of the risks brands face when they court popular appeal by appropriating working-class styles without understanding their significance.

“Brands need to be in with, and not talking down at, their audiences,” explains Boyle, “You need to have a fun brand personality to do hun culture authentically,” he adds.

Boyle also feels that because of its status as a subculture, Hun culture is unlikely to disappear quickly. “It’s not a top-down trend that has been pushed by fashion magazines or designers. It’s organic. People still go to the internet and have that eye for big scenes and relatable moments. There’s no death. There’s no endpoint.”

From noughties nostalgia to 2020s opportunity

While much of Hun culture is centred around nostalgia, particularly references to the 2000s - moments like Nadine Coyle lying about her age on Irish Popstars, unhinged X Factor auditions, and mayhem in the Big Brother house - it shows no sign of dying - yet.

Downes explains that while many of these references, and Waitrose’s own use of S Club 7, might be more milennial, their ability to resonate with audiences can be much wider, and calls on brands not to “underestimate Gen Z and their points of reference.

According to Irving, ITV's own research reveals that when times are tough, people have a tendency to lean towards finding small moments of joy where they can. “Seven out of ten Brits feel like life in the UK is harder than ever at the moment and half don’t feel it’s going to get better any time soon which is a really depressing statistic but actually quite good background for why hun culture feels like a really powerful space with a really important role for consumers but also for brands to play in as well,” she says.

Altin is also unsurprised that the loveofhuns account took off during Covid and continues to resonate with audiences facing a cost of living crisis. “We’re going through this time of absolute shit, and hun culture is very much British, working class, women and queer people and they’re just saying f*ck you I’m going to be fabulous," she says.

It explains why brands like Diet Coke - which has been marketed primarily at women since the 'Diet Coke Break' campaigns of the 90s and has been fronted by Kate Moss, has switched to a more attainable fan-focused approach, embracing the everyday office hun.

Despite the danger of over-commercialisation, Hun culture is at its most powerful precisely when it channels a resistance energy and celebrates brands that offer genuine value for their customers. For Altin, the reason embracing Hun culture has worked so well for Very Group is because they didn’t “borrow” or “exploit” it, but rather it was “inherent to the brand”.

As Very Group CMO Jessica Myers noted in conversation with Creative Salon: "Hun-culture is apparent in the way the flamingos speak, their houses, in the language and creative copywriting, and in the music. Girls Aloud is classic hun-track; this is just one example of how they've absolutely got her. And this isn't a made-up person, everything we do is completely grounded in data and insight.”

And according to Altin, the future of hun culture lies in the next generation: “It may be that it’s at a tipping point where it runs the risk of becoming a little bit overcommercialised. Having said that, there’s many people who are happy to fall out of prosecco brunches on a Saturday, and that doesn’t show any sign of slowing. At its heart, I don’t think it will change because it’s built on evergreens within British female working-class culture, and glittery resistance is always going to be needed," she says.

In the end, it is Kim Woodburn, her refusal to dilute herself and her natural but chaotic relatability, that best encapsulates how brands can continue to leverage hun culture beyond short-lived collabs and surface-level sales.

In an era of performance-led marketing and overstated polish, what hun culture does at its finest is to deliver connection over curated perfection. It’s defiantly maximalist, messy, and self-aware. Brands that embrace this energy with sincerity cultivate trust, loyalty, and beloved status that live far beyond the hype of a pink, fluffy, chronically online trend.