ITV Celebrates TV Moments by Giving King's Cross Hun Energy

Hiya babes! Welcome to The Hunderground – ITV’s fully immersive, high-glam celebration of the absolute icons who’ve attained the status of natty trej* via legendary ITV moments, unforgettable quotes and fabulous fash-un. 

From 7th - 21st of September, ITV is giving Kings Cross underground a glow up, so travellers can be fully submersed in pure hun energy. 

After being welcomed at our turnt out turnstiles, visitors will be encouraged to ‘Amanda Holden The Handrail’ as they travel underground. Sashaying through our ‘Hall of Huns’ they’ll be able to dust up on hun-history, from our leopardprint diva Bet Lynch to the unstoppable Alison Hammond, via Deirdre Rashid, Mr Chips, Dame Maggie Smith, Madge from Benidorm and the Loose Women. As they wait for their fully hun-ified train to pull in, passengers will be able to take in the hun-believable sight of a whole platform takeover. 

The Hunderground is part of ITV’s continued support for ‘There’s No Place Like ITV’, a new brand platform originally launched in January that’s all about feeling seen, welcome, and part of something bigger. Hun culture has long been dismissed as naff and frivolous - but that’s exactly why we’re obsessed - ITV see the iconic role Huns have played in pop culture. From everyday icons to unapologetic divas, the Hunderground celebrates the huns who call ITV home - a place where anyone can belong.

To properly do justice to this uniquely British subculture, the in-house team at ITV Creative undertook the biggest “hun-audit” ever conducted, deep-diving into the broadcaster's archive to catalog and trace the lineage of Hun culture from its 1960s soap roots to our modern TikTok era. They also drew on research by ITV Media’s cultural strategy team led by Lucy Irving and their research paper ‘Hey Hunni!’.

Being this fabulous is hard work, so to keep our huns going we’ve also partnered with the Lola's Cupcakes concession at the top of the escalators to create a set of four hun-branded cupcakes – each featuring a different iconic ITV hun.

EssenceMediacom, a WPP Media brand, handled the media planning and buying for this nationwide campaign, designed to embed the ITV brand into everyday moments of entertainment, culture and conversation through the power of contextual media placements.

Beyond the Hunderground the brand campaign extends nationwide through a spectacular out-of-home footprint, national radio, mood-targeted audio moments and premium podcast integrations on Bottoms Up! and Staying Relevant. Social activity across Meta, TikTok and Pinterest, alongside precision-targeted digital display and contextual print insertions in national titles will also help extend the campaign's reach nationwide. The wider brand work covers every genre and kind of content that ITV offers, and includes autumn programming highlights like the concluding part of iconic longitudinal documentary series 70 Up, The Voice UK and new drama thriller starring Michelle Keegan and Douglas Booth, The Blame.

Tom Houser, Executive Creative Director at ITV Creative, said: 

“Only ITV could produce an actual research paper all about Huns. The moment I read it, I knew we’d need to do something proper to bring it to life – The Hunderground is just that. We wanted to take this amazing media space and do something akin to a big fancy exhibition at the British Museum – to treat this fabulous British subculture with the reverence it deserves. This balance of silly with serious is at the heart of what we do best - that's why there’s no place like ITV. Mind the gap, hun!

Simon Ricks, Head of Marketing at ITV, added: “Hun culture is a brilliantly British phenomenon, and ITV has been part of its story for decades. From iconic characters and unforgettable catchphrases to the personalities who have become part of the nation’s cultural fabric, The Hunderground is our unapologetically ITV way of celebrating the people and moments that make ITV feel like a place where everyone belongs. And if we can make your three-minute wait for the next Tube a little more bearable with a bit of leopard print, even better.”

Rachael Haddow, Senior Associate Director at WPP Media, added: “Executing a brand campaign of this scale and complexity has required an extraordinary level of collaboration and is testament to the trusted relationship between EssenceMediacom and ITV’s media, marketing and creative teams. The Hunderground is the activation centrepiece, but it is just one part of a national, multi-channel campaign, and we can’t wait for audiences to experience it.”

Hun /hʌn/ (noun)
A beautifully chaotic, tongue-in-cheek British subculture. It’s a high-glam, mid-drama, and low-cost lifestyle. Think massive laughs in messy moments, and fiercely championing anyone unapologetically themselves… much like ITV.

CREDITS

Creative Agency: ITV Creative

Creative leads: Adam Kirby + Marc Gibb, Jonny Dowling.

ECD Tom Houser 

Head of Production Trine Johnson

Senior Producers Angela Lyttle, Hannah Levy 

Producer Tom Ghazizadeh-Harris 

Team Producer Carita Culora

Campaign Management     Jonny Dowling 

Head of Strategy Annabel Barratt 

Strategist Alex Orton

Senior Media Strategist Alexandra Banks 

Senior Marketing Manager Lucy Pack

Head of Marketing                            Simon Ricks 

Delivery Manager Patty Wong 

Experiences Charlie Cooper Henniker, Zoe Davies

Social Katie Sawdon, Megan Green

PR Sylvia Brendel, Olivia Hodgson

Cultural strategy and insight Lucy Irving at ITV Media 

Creative Editor Lucy Miller 

Senior Designers Tina Afshar, Joe Benjamin

Designers Gabriel Da Silva-Wells, Hollie Smith, Harry Vincent 

Retoucher Chris Roome

Motion Designers Martin Shannon, Crawford Wilson

Sound Engineer Mark Webster 

Media Agency: EssenceMediacom - WPP Media

Creative contributors: Tom Ahearn, Annabel Barratt, Lauren Bodiam, Cait Bolt, James Briggs, Jamie Chang, Charlie Cooper Henniker, Toby Derham, Tom Hall, Michael Jones, Hannah O’Halloran, Angharad Rees-Williams, Paul Ridsdale, Tom Silcock Marsh, Dom South, Jonathan Truin and Rachel Tweedy.