How Emerging Brands Can Bypass Traditional PR Gatekeeping with Substack 🎁

One of my BFCM trends this year is...

Oct 28, 2025

NGL, I’m feeling the mondayitis situation today…I was out in Joshua Tree doing desert things with my Mum visiting from Australia this weekend and while I love a weekend away, it always makes Monday so much harder right?!

Lucky for pilates and steam rooms…and coffee!!!

So - I’ve been talking BFCM and Q4 strategy with founders since August TBH, and now everyone is catching up, my world is slowly filling with more and more BFCM content, and if you haven’t gotten a handle on your plan yet, you’re dangerously close to scramble time.

Part of the BFCM business chat I’ve been having includes the BFCM 2025 Trends I’m predicting.

In this post, I’m sharing one of them plus, my 5 Step Pitch Guide ~ for Bootstrapped Brands.

👋 Hiya! I’m Sarah Saxty, but most people call me Sax.

I've been referred to as "a business guardian angel" and a "pocket CMO" "community builder" and "my motivation" but in basic terms - I'm a brand marketing mentor and business coach helping beauty, wellness, and lifestyle brands launch, grow and scale. 

Everything we do is rooted in my core philosophies and frameworks: Sticky Brand DNA, BFF-level Customer Connection, Aligned Marketing, and IFGT Founder Confidence. 

The same things we talk about here :) 

I’m in my IFGT (I Fucking Got This) era, 44 years into life and 20 years into my brand building career. 

My mission is to pass this energy and my full spectrum expertise* working in billion dollar categories onto as many people as possible with Creating Forward Studio; we do this with my signature Incubator program, the Forward Founder community platform, and gatherings. 

[*career in 2X ~ fashion full-timer > NYC brand founder > marketing freelancer > fractional CMO]

My brand, is to help you create a brand that people are obsessed with and a business that drives sustainable revenue. 

Let's start creating forward. ↴

This is for you if you are:

A brand that keeps pitching Vogue, Well & Good, Goop and getting ghosted
A founder on a bootstrapped budget, but a fucking great product people need to know about
A marketer wanting to level up your Q4 and Holiday Season marketing plan

For the next few posts leading up to Nov, we’re going to go all in on BFCM here on Creating Forward, and every week, I’ll share:

One actionable strategy

One useful resource from the industry

But - not as much as you’d get if you were a Forward Founder Friend :) inside my private Founder Community, where we have a dedicated BFCM Hotline; a channel for me to share valuable resources and ideas, and a space for you to collaborate and share knowledge.

The BFCM Trend

I’m calling it - traditional gift guides in 2025 are dead.

Well, not completely dead, but the landscape totally fragmented.

Gift guides usually mean expensive affiliate platforms, PR agency gatekeepers, ghosted pitches, and IYKYK cliques.

Unless you knew someone or paid someone, good luck getting featured.

Traditional media publications have lost trust.

They are driven by pay-to-play models, featuring mostly brands that can pay to be featured.

The way to be a part of these programs is usually by setting up big affiliate platforms that emerging brands just don’t have time or money for.

Readers are seeing through this.

Readers are migrating to independent voices they actually believe.

People with unique perspectives who curate cool things.

That’s why Substack is exploding in 2025.

We have next-gen tastemakers on Substack with deep subscriber trust and intentional curation.

That’s why my prediction is that Substack curated gift guides are going to take over.

That’s why I’m sharing a Guide to Pitching Substack Gift Guides here.

And if you need more proof of Substack’s potential, listen to this podcast I listened to and loved.

The Substack Era

I’m still getting Q’s about “how do we pitch magazine gift guides?” from emerging brand founders.

They’re still chasing Vogue and Goop placements, which frankly, are nearly impossible to get and don’t move the needle, because - it’s not where your BFF customers are.

I’ve seen it happen with clients who have actually been featured in Vogue, I saw it happen with Kate Hudson when I got her placed in all the dream publications for our brand INBLOOM.

Save the time and energy. Shift your focus to Substack.

Substack makes collaboration more accessible.

Substackers earn their cred by curating cool things on behalf of their readers.

Curation is cultural currency.

This leaves a gap for you.

The barrier to entry is knowing how to pitch properly.

My 5 Step Gift Guide Pitch System

If I were a bootstrapped brand wanting to hit gift guides in 2025, here’s exactly what I’d do.

STEP 1: Research Now

Start before everyone else gets in there, inboxes get full, emails get ignored.

Curate your list of Substackers in your category AND adjacent ones.

If you’re a beauty brand, think dermatologists, beauty editors, skin experts, salon owners.

Wellness? Naturopaths, coaches, nutrition experts, studio owners, chefs.

Add on adjacencies like style, art, design, travel, hospitality, entrepreneurs, mothers, brand marketing and commerce writers for founder-led features.

(I wrote about Founder Led marketing here a few weeks ago)

STEP 2: Get to Know Who They Are

For each Substack on your list, read their last 10 posts.

What value are they adding to their community?

What do their subscribers comment and care about?

You’re looking for where your product solves or adds value to something they’re already talking about.

STEP 3: Get Your Positioning Aligned

This is where most brands mess up.

They pitch product features and benefits.

What you need to do instead is position your product as the answer to something they’re already talking about and something their readers will be obsessed with.

That’s what they want, to delight their readers.

Pitch why their specific readers will care.

Pitch why they need it.

Pitch why they can increase their own cred by featuring you.

The pitch is also going to need assets, so think about what you’ll share with them, photos, brand info, a one pager, a website page?

This is where your Sticky Brand DNA Framework comes into play:
- Your founder story and intention
- Your future-proof trends and purpose
- Your BFF customer and community
- Your product positioning
- Your brand’s unique POV and conversation themes

BUT - and this is a big but ~

If you can’t give me at least three super compelling bullet points - skip all of this gift guide stuff and focus on building your SBDNA first.

This is exactly what we do inside the Creating Forward Incubator FYI :) Pricing is going to go up in 2026 too…lock it in now and get your brand firing before EOY.
SBDNA is the brand foundation that makes your marketing connect, and convert.
Without it, your pitch falls flat..your entire brand falls flat, and marketing just feels really HARD.