Their promo model absolutely encourages a cult-like following on FB. If you post a photo of yourself in their stuff, you might win a £250 voucher. If you comment on lots of other people’s photos, you get ranked in their “most helpful” categories (or others) and might get a voucher. If you post a picture of your pet, you might get (you guessed it) a voucher. So you have all these people submitting content and engaging with their group, trying to get free stuff each month. Negativity is automatically reduced by this model, and anyone writing “great” below your picture is probably more worried about their ranking than what you’re feeling.
What the people engaging with this may not realise is that they ARE the product. More likes and comments means this stuff stays in your feed, encouraging you to buy more. Shares and tags grow the following, drawing more in. You’re giving your photos (if they’re any good) to F&F to use in marketing for free (a pro photographer and model for the day would cost £1000s).
You get people trying to exploit the group for followers to their Insta so they can become influencers, and fair play to them, but in reality they often fail to get the followers they need to be successful. Their efforts only grow the F&F cult. You also get people who network within the group and grow an F&F following, and hence get more likes, comments, and guarantee a voucher for themselves each month. These are in effect, unofficial (and underpaid) marketing employees of F&F.
The most bonkers posts are the ones where people write about the most horrendous things in their life and somehow tenuously link it to F&F. E.g. “My dad just died but look at my lovely shoes.” These get loads of interaction.
The worst thing IMO is the way F&F run design competitions each year (“design a product and we’ll put it into production”). I’m a designer and this model really winds me up. It means they get hours’ and hours’ worth of commissions and research done for free. A lot of companies do it now to save money on actually employing someone full-time. The prize is laughable, and it all adds to this situation where the work of designers is undervalued. Some of the results become “design by committee” rather than vision-led however, as they’re voted for by the FB group. The Heeled Brancaster is a good example of this.
True, no one is forced to enter, but when you’re broke and looking at all these aspirational images, it’s very easy to get sucked in to giving away more of your time for free on the false hope that it might land you some cash.
The products themselves aren’t all bad. I think some of their boots are actually quite nice, although I’d never buy them at their RRP. The depreciation on footwear is horrendous, so if you care about your cash, it is worth considering that. For bags, IMO Aspinal and Russell & Bromley make superior ones at that price point.
F&F are trying out tweed now. I personally think Dubarry does way better “pretend countrygirl” tweed with lovely silk lining, but there are probably others I don’t know about that are also good.