Marketing will play a key role in Peter Millar’s future as it continues to position itself as more than just a golf brand. And Paul Nugent is the man who has been tasked with making that happen.
Chief marketing officer Nugent is relatively new to the company, having joined Peter Millar in May 2025 after serving as senior vice president of global brand marketing at Under Armour and vice president of global marketing for Umbro. The U.K.-born Nugent has also headed marketing for the Hey Dude brand.
With a background that straddles fashion and sports, he embraced the idea of joining Peter Millar to help the company achieve its goal of evolving from a golf label into a luxury lifestyle brand.
“It was really interesting to join a company that had such deep-rooted relationships within the golf world,” he said. “What came very naturally to Peter Millar was to foster those relationships and continue to grow. So when I came in, the task at hand wasn’t to increase awareness or brand affinity within the golf space. It was really to broaden the share of closet and to show that this brand has adaptability.”
He was the catalyst behind the recent signing of NFL star Christian McCaffrey to join the brand’s golf ambassadors.
With its golf ambassadors, Peter Millar still tends to focus on promoting its golfwear — with a few exceptions, such as an event in the Hamptons last year with Cameron Young where the PGA Tour pro showed up dressed in the brand’s lifestyle product.
But signing McCaffrey opens up an entirely new window for the brand, Nugent believes. “We really wanted to use somebody that would give a different flavor to the brand without being so far disconnected to the values that made us,” he said. The campaign looks different, Nugent added, “but without being detached from the Peter Millar reality. It feels fresh.”
Paul Nugent
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“Christian is a football player, and he has an inherent love for golf, but we’re not using him for that,” Nugent added. “It’s very much a lifestyle play. The brand has used a lot of models in the past in photo shoots, but I’m a firm believer in finding shared values with individual personalities that can really validate a brand, rather than trying to force any narrative. And I think we’ve managed to crack that with Christian on this occasion.”
But don’t expect Peter Millar to stray too far from its core and partner with rappers or avant-garde designers.
“I have a conversation almost every other day with someone who would love to work with us — be that an individual, an institution, a brand — because Peter Millar is very much cemented in corporate America as an elite brand. The team is keeping a very open mind, but the story has to be authentic and right.”
Nugent said before making any commitments, he explores what the consumer would take away from the messaging. “I think for Christian, it’ll be clear and people will understand why that partnership makes sense. But unless a brand achieves that, I don’t think it’s worth it. It’s better to stay quiet than to create noise.”
That includes celebrating the 25th anniversary.
The company’s fall campaign has a more lifestyle aesthetic.
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He said Peter Millar has generally kept a low profile, but it is ready to become more visible now — albeit in a very Peter Millar way.
“The brand has not been very vocal or opened the curtains before,” he said. “I describe it a little bit like ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.’ We’re opening up for our 25th, and people are going to see behind the curtain. But it’s on our terms. We’re here to celebrate, but we don’t do things for the sake of doing them. We’re in it for the long game, and everything that we do is with intention.”
He said that in the coming months, expect the brand to “pivot into some interesting spaces that maybe people don’t expect, but will understand when they see the story and it’s explained to them. It should never just feel like marketing. It should feel like we’re solving some problems for the consumer where possible.”
Because Peter Millar offers different collections — Crown, Crown Crafted, Crown Sport and Pursuit, a performance sub-brand within Crown Crafted — Nugent is working to determine the nuances within each before developing marketing plans.
“We’ve done a lot of work recently on dissecting what would be described as the Peter Millar man, and it’s a mindset and a vibe and [depends on the] wearing occasion. Yes, there are consumers who wear Peter Millar in a golf occasion, in a very elevated way, or as lifestyle. Sometimes that’s the same person, sometimes it’s different. With our collections, I think the important thing is to clearly create the distinction of the different vibe and intent of that product.”
With Crown, for instance, Nugent believes that when the customers see images and how it’s positioned on the website and merchandised in stores, “they get a sense of why it was created and the purpose.” Ditto for Crown Crafted and the performance products.
“We’re starting to construct some of that language now,” he said, adding: “The beauty that I’ve encountered in my time here is the willingness between design, product and marketing to work coherently side by side to ensure that whatever comes out at the end of that design process makes sense to the consumer.”
Case in point is the new Pursuit performance-skewed line that has McCaffrey as its face.
“We sat down very early and were able to construct the language, the labeling, the tone, the color palette, and then ultimately the ambassador, together,” Nugent said.
And because this marks the brand’s 25th anniversary, Peter Millar also created a sophisticated, luxury assortment to celebrate, which will also make its appearance in the marketing materials. That includes changing the color of its mints — a little extra gift put into every order — to the colors of the brand’s first product, a cashmere sweater. “It’s almost like a collectible that might seep into social,” he said.
A Peter Millar suite at the Omni Resort.
kevin kaminski photography
Nugent said that surprisingly, Peter Millar has had a lot of success over the past few months on TikTok. “Peter Millar in the social space is really ingrained in golf culture,” he said. “So as golf is having a moment, being one of the leading players in the space means we’re part of the cultural conversation.”
In addition, the brand has seen success with podcasts, such as one with Peter Millar’s elusive chief executive officer Scott Mahoney in the golf space, and other partnerships around some marquee golf events. For the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills on Long Island, for example, Peter Millar partnered with The Blade helicopter transportation, and also worked with influencers and media partners.
“We did more than we’ve done in the past, and that allowed us to have moments of content creation that manifested on social in very cool and authentic ways,” he said.
Other out-of-the-box relationships included one with the Omni Hotels, where Peter Millar created branded suites for its properties in Carlsbad, Calif., and Frisco, Texas. “If you’re someone who knows Peter Millar intimately, and then suddenly you’re in a suite with a pool table branded with the Crown logo, and you get a robe with the Peter Millar logo, it allows our brand, in a non-commercial way, to create experiences.”
Looking ahead, Nugent said to expect the brand to continue to flex its marketing muscle. “There’s a whole world of possibilities open to what this brand could be,” he said. “I’m talking to other brands about how we can work together to create some more magic in the future.”
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