Forget Confidence. Why F&F Promises Composure Amid the Chaos

​If you grew up in the UK, the chant is likely etched into your memory. Sung with vicious glee across school playgrounds at anyone whose uniform lacked a designer label: ‘Let’s all go to Tesco’s / Where [insert name] buys their best clothes.’

For a long time, that taunt reflected a genuine consumer reality. F&F, the clothing arm of retail giant Tesco, was the definition of a distress purchase. It was where you grabbed a white t-shirt because you’d spilled coffee on the one you were wearing, or picked up school trousers alongside the weekly milk shop. It was functional, not desirable.

“The truth fundamentally is people were going in there out of necessity,” admits Saskia Jones, deputy chief strategy officer at BBH. “No one was really going there to browse.”

But behind the scenes, the reality of the product had shifted. The supermarket’s clothing and homeware sub-brand F&F had been quietly elevating its quality, resulting in a wave of social media buzz where shoppers were proudly showing off ‘dupes’ of high-end items. The product was ready for the high street, but the brand perception was still stuck in the bread aisle.

To change the narrative and reach a new era for 2025, BBH first had to ignore one of the industry’s favourite buzzwords. For a decade, female-focused marketing has been obsessed with selling ‘confidence’, a path worn smooth by brands like Dove. But Saskia argues that the modern woman doesn’t need a pep talk.

“That whole category has been going down the trope of confidence for a really long time,” she observes. “But actually, women have more confidence than they did 10 years ago.”

The problem wasn't a lack of self-esteem, but the chaotic reality of modern life. Between working longer hours and a doom-laden news cycle, the prevailing feeling was that life had become unmanageable. “It kind of feels like everything in the world is out of your control,” says Saskia. “The world is going to shit... and you want some semblance of control.”

This led to a sharp strategic pivot. “If the zig is confidence, the zag is composure,” she says, relying on the black-sheep agency’s reliable framework for seeing advertising differently.

Unlike confidence, which Saskia notes can feel “quite alpha”, composure is “elegant and poised”. It taps into the psychological phenomenon known as the lipstick effect – the idea that small acts of self-care can provide armour against a chaotic world.

“There is a certain poise of going, ‘I basically just need to look like I’ve got my shit together and I will feel a bit better about it’,” she says. “Everything’s going to shit but I’m going to spend money on lipstick, I’m going to put it on, and we’ll just pretend everything’s fine.”

Strategically, the shift was clear. But creatively, overcoming the stigma required drastic measures. BBH knew that if they simply showed nice clothes in a nice setting, consumers would remain sceptical. To change the perception, they had to jolt the system.

“That was a really conscious decision. We had to overcorrect,” says Saskia. “You have to push it so far into the high fashion world in terms of how it’s shot.”

This meant eschewing standard retail photography for the cinematic surrealism of Alex Prager, an Emmy award-winning filmmaker and photographer. Known for her hyper-stylised, slightly uncanny aesthetic, Prager brought a visual language usually reserved for luxury houses.

However, high-gloss imagery alone runs the risk of feeling pretentious – a supermarket brand trying too hard to sit at the cool table. The genius of the ‘Style It Out’ platform lies in undercutting that glamour with the messy, undignified reality of actual life. The campaigns depict women looking impeccable while dealing with disasters: getting a dress caught in a car door, being locked out at 7am, or finding the kids have drawn all over the new homeware.

The creative expression of this strategy has been defined by a steadfast commitment to the unvarnished truth. It began with the summer launch of ‘Style It Out’, where Alex Prager’s cinematic lens captured high-fashion resilience in the face of toilet roll stuck to a heel or a dress trapped in a car door. The autumn follow-up doubled down on this domestic realism, finding the chic in leaky ceilings and children using new homeware as a canvas. This ethos of celebrating the ‘perfectly imperfect’ reached its zenith with the festive campaign, ‘That’s What Makes It Christmas’. Moving beyond the screen, the brand translated the ‘Style It Out’ attitude into a tangible product line: a collection of Christmas jumpers designed to pre-empt the season’s most awkward inquisitions. With slogans like ‘Yes, I’m still single’ knitted into the fabric, the knitwear served as a wearable shield against intrusive relatives, proving that F&F understands not just how its customers dress, but how they survive the holidays.

“What we never wanted to be is a fashion brand that took itself too seriously,” Saskia explains. “It’s like the classic thing: don’t tell me you’re funny, tell me a joke. It was that element of please don’t tell me you’re stylish, just be stylish.”

By pairing high-end aesthetics with low-stakes chaos, the brand validates the quality of the clothing without losing the warmth and wit inherent to Tesco. It proves that while you can’t control life’s mishaps, you can certainly dress for them.

This new attitude isn’t just window dressing; it marks a fundamental shift in business strategy. With the brand recently launching online and expanding its homeware offering, the physical constraint of the grocery store is becoming less relevant. Consequently, BBH helped F&F redraw its battle lines.

“We made a much more pointed competitor set,” Saskia reveals. “Yes, of course there’s Sainsbury’s and Asda... but really we want to be competing with some of the high street retailers.”

It is an ambition that requires a brand platform capable of travelling. ‘Style It Out’ has given F&F permission to enter cultural conversations it was previously excluded from – whether it’s Taylor Swift tripping on stage or a viral social media mishap. It transforms F&F from a passive label into an active lifestyle participant.

Internally, the effect has been galvanising. BBH creatives are now proactively writing to the platform, sensing that the brand has finally found its voice. As Saskia puts it, the goal was “moving it on without moving it off” – evolving the brand into a high-fashion space without losing the grounded reality that makes it accessible. F&F, it seems, has finally found its composure.

Perhaps the most surprising element of this strategic overhaul is the lack of friction involved. Strategy pivots often involve dragging a hesitant client kicking and screaming, but Saskia is candid about the reality.

“I haven’t got the jeopardy or the tension that I love to put in any of my briefs because I just didn’t want to lie to you, but honestly, they’ve been amazing,” she says, aware that her narrative would be stronger if there’d been a battle. “They [the client’s marketing team] knew it was the right moment in time for F&F to grow up and be on its own.”

The lack of resistance came from a shared understanding of what F&F is – and crucially, what it isn’t. While the campaign borrows the visual language of high fashion, it never forgets its democratic roots.

“Otherwise I’m not sure strategically and creatively we would have done our job, because you just end up becoming a bit pretentious,” Saskia reflects. “And I know F&F will never be that brand. It will always be, to some extent, a brand that democratises fashion.”

Ultimately, the shift from confidence to composure has done more than just tidy up a brand architecture; it has injected a sense of fun back into the business. “It’s a great brand to work on. Honestly, I’ve had the best year on it ever,” she looks back on 2025. 

In a world that feels increasingly out of control, F&F has managed to give its customers something far more useful than empty confidence: the ability to handle the chaos, and look good doing it.