Tom Nowak

PRESIDENT, PETERSON MILLA HOOKS

Gap has always known that great brands stand for more than products and prices. The mission for Gap was to rise above the promotional noise of the holiday season and take the emotional high road. 

“Make Love” celebrated people who are making more love in the world through their philanthropy, art and actions.  Like Cindy Lauper and Billy Porter teaching us about acceptance in Kinky Boots; Waris Ahluwalia and Quentin Jones showing us new ways to look at the world; Harry Belafonte and Q-Tip’s fight against violence; Kyleigh Kuhn’s project to build schools for Afghan girls; Tony Bennett’s Exploring the Arts foundation, making sure every public school student has an opportunity to be inspired.

In addition to getting a lot of news coverage, “Make Love” won two Grand CLIO Image Awards, a Mosaic Award, and the Sikh Image Award from the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (for the ad featuring Waris Ahluwalia).

Results

Gap experienced two consecutive years of same store sales increases and a 67% rise in the company's stock price (a top ten S&P 500 performer). Yahoo Finance named Gap it's Company of the Year in 2012.

PRESIDENT, PETERSON MILLA HOOKS

The “Money Can’t Buy Style” campaign targeted a customer profile we named the “Stylepreneur” because of her entrepreneurial, almost maverick approach to fashion. Research showed that compared to apparel shoppers at Target and Walmart, the Stylepreneur was more assertive, independent and vocal.  She wasn’t concerned about the latest trend or wearing the right label, she wanted to express herself and stand out from the crowd.  By the numbers, the Stylepreneur was younger, more urban, more ethnically diverse and, most importantly, more inclined to shop at Kmart.

Street casting was held in New York to find people who authentically demonstrated the Stylepreneur gene. Fashion bloggers were also invited to participate in the shoot, helping spread the word about the new campaign. When the cast arrived at the shoot, there was no stylist on hand.  Instead they were directed to "put together whatever you want, however you want."

Interactive components of the campaign invited Stylepreneurs to “Show Us What You Got" with a contest that asked people to submit photos and videos of themselves rocking their personal style. A small group was selected to attend a casting session via Skype with photographer/director Chris Heads.  The eventual winner received a trip to New York and was photographed for the spring campaign.

We also activated a Remix Challenge for influencers and bloggers during Fashion Week to generate PR and social content, and drive visits to the website.

Results

Kmart made significant progress attracting a younger customer, tallying more share growth than both Target and Walmart in the under 25 segment (NPD). 

See case study video.

CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER

Denim is more than a product category for Evereve—it’s a growth engine, a brand builder, a loyalty driver, and a powerful entry point for attracting new customers. When women find jeans they truly love, it builds trust in our brand, heightens fashion credibility, and delivers business results. By positioning EVEREVE as a go-to destination for denim, we increased sales by 68% over two years and improved margin by 210 basis points.

PRESIDENT, PETERSON MILLA HOOKS

How did Target become Tar-zhay? Well, there are lots of reasons. But first and foremost: they made it easy and fun to shop. By convincing their guests that chic and cheap could comfortably co-exist, Target completely redefined people's expectations of the mass channel. From their design ethos to community giving to designer partnerships, Target tirelessly delivered on their promise of "Expect More. Pay Less." And, as a result, they saw their market value grow by $50 billion.

CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER

In early 2015, Best Buy performed its first customer segmentation in ten years in order to better understand which customers had the most financial value for the company and what these customers needed and expected from Best Buy.

The segmentation showed Best Buy's most valuable customers were passionate about tech and considered it an integral part of their lives. No surprise there. What was surprising was that these customers were quite a bit younger than we’d assumed.

In order to uncover attitudinal insights about this younger customer group (to complement the demographic and behavioral segmentation info provided by GfK), my team performed an MRI analysis of the segment data. The MRI run gave us a much fuller picture of what made this target tick - they're ambitious, style-oriented, and very externally motivated. They seek recognition from others as being in-the-know, and they choose brands with badge value in mind.

MRI index scores:
- I'd pay extra for a product that portrays the right image (153)
- I admit I wear designer brands to impress other people (178)
- I enjoy being the center of attention (181)
- I strive to achieve a high social status (185)
- I want others to say 'wow' when they see my electronics (233)

Creative Strategy

The MRI findings illustrated the best way to emotionally connect with our most valuable customers was to communicate Best Buy's people and products would help them be recognized as tech-savvy, in-the-know experts. At the holidays, we didn’t talk about gift giving as a way of showing you care, but as a competition to be won ('Win the Holidays'). Buying a new 4K TV wasn't just about enjoying a brighter, more detailed picture, but throwing the Super Bowl party everyone wants to be at. And investing in a new laptop wasn't just about greater computing power, but a statement that you’re always one step ahead of the crowd.

We also learned from MRI that our target was attracted to brands that are approachable, speak with a human voice, and don't take themselves too seriously. As a result, we utilized a more light-hearted tone for the creative than in previous years.

“Win the Holidays” was so successful that we kept the “Win” theme for future campaign executions.

Results

- Same store sales growth YOY, 2015 and 2016
- Six consecutive quarters of YOY market share gains, return on advertising spend, and EPS increases
- Substantial improvements for all tracked Brand Health KPIs - awareness, consideration, preference and intent to shop - despite material decrease in media spend
- Growth in participation and investment from vendor partners as a result of enhanced campaign effectiveness, providing an additional $60M+ in funding

PRESIDENT, PETERSON MILLA HOOKS

We put together a brand book for Gap Inc's management team expressing our belief that Banana Republic should return to its core DNA of adventure and discovery, through a modern urban lens that connected with the aspirations of the Millennial generation.

PRESIDENT, PETERSON MILLA HOOKS

For years, Gap had experienced an identity crisis, chasing the latest trends and trying to play the fast fashion game. Remember their logo reinvention debacle?

When a new management and creative team took over the brand, they set out to re-establish what Gap had always done best – well-constructed basics at a democratic price. 

The “Back To Blue” campaign was about returning to Gap’s authentic roots and reclaiming their leadership in denim. It championed the importance of being true to yourself and following your own unique path. 

Millennial talent including Dree Hemingway, Ian Mellencamp, Alexa Ray Joel and Dhani Harrison underscored Gap’s message of honoring heritage while embracing the future.

Results

Gap experienced two consecutive years of same store sales increases and a 67% rise in the company's stock price (a top ten S&P 500 performer). Yahoo Finance named Gap it's Company of the Year in 2012.

PRESIDENT, PETERSON MILLA HOOKS

Nine West needed a brand rejuvenation. While the product had improved and become more stylish, it was still perceived as vanilla work wear. It had become forgettable to its core audience and invisible to Millennials.

We embraced the one advantage Nine West had over its competition - its incredible variety and breadth. Whatever kind of shoe you were looking for, you could probably find it at a Nine West store.

Our campaign idea was to underscore that Nine West had a shoe for every occasion, and to create talk value by inventing all new occasions for the modern woman's, "Girls" inspired, Instagram-driven lifestyle. We purposely pushed the envelope and over half a billion earned media impressions later, Nine West was back on the radar. 

Results

See case study video.

CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER

The Evereve customer exhibits a lean-forward approach to life. She embraces possibility and is inspired by women who exemplify a growth mindset.

“This is an amazing time in your life—you have the energy, empathy, and resourcefulness to become your best self and to be a positive influence on everyone around you. Now, more than at any time in your life, anything is possible.”

In support of Evereve’s brand purpose—to inspire women to keep moving forward in their fashion and their lives—we created “Ever-Forward,” an interview series celebrating highly-accomplished women who exemplify the brand’s ethos. These profiles were featured in our catalogs, on our social channels, and across all digital channels. We also developed a local version of the series highlighting some of the incredible women in our Twin Cities hometown.

CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER

Our target for Back to School was in-coming college freshmen. Like our Best Buy brand target, these students were highly motivated by external recognition and wanted to be seen as in the know. As a result, they were nervous about entering college both because of the academic challenge and the need to fit in. Our "Tech to Impress" campaign featuring Adam DeVine taught students how Best Buy could help them get started on the right foot.

Results

One of the most successful BTS campaigns in recent history, "Tech to Impress" drove +1.8% in same store sales (in an environment of negative industry growth) and double-digit growth in both profit margin and market share.

PRESIDENT, PETERSON MILLA HOOKS

Sephora was beloved for its cosmetics, but didn't get much credit for its skincare business. This was a concern as skincare was the fast-growing and highest margin category in beauty.  “Skincare Junkies” told the story of Sephora’s skincare expertise, balancing a brand message for Sephora with product callouts for its many co-op partners. While most skincare advertising tends to be serious and full of science, we chose to to stay true to Sephora's fun, approachable personality.

The campaign came to life across all consumer touch points including print, OOH, digital and social media, and in store.

PRESIDENT, PETERSON MILLA HOOKS

Behr had a reputation as a solid, hardworking, go-to paint. But “great quality” and “one-coat coverage” were no longer enough to keep people interested. Color choice had become the motivating factor for paint shoppers, and they were looking to social media for inspiration.

The “True To Hue” campaign celebrated Behr’s color story by using Behr’s unique paint names as the subject matter for short, engaging, human stories distributed via digital and social media. Unlike other paint brands, Behr communicated that great design wasn't about copying the paint trend of the season, but about finding the color that represents your individuality.

Results

Behr recorded its highest-ever sales and increased its lead in market share. Additionally, the brand's reputation score with DIY'ers improved from #4 to #2 in the category.

PRESIDENT, PETERSON MILLA HOOKS

“Love Comes in Every Shade” started as an assignment to promote Gap's colorful product assortment for the holidays. 
e came back with a campaign that was much more than just a color story. It also celebrated the holidays as a time to reconnect with family, and redefined the very notion of "family" to include not only the people who share our blood, but share our lives. 

Each ad in the campaign highlighted a different form of loving relationship – some traditional, some less so.  Puppy Love with actor Jack Huston and his dog Orso; Best Friend Love with director Gia Copolla and actress Nathalie Love; True Love with actors Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan; Fatherly Love with rapper Nas and his father, blues musician Olu Dara; Sibling Love with surf band The Atomics; In Love with actress Diana Garcia and musician Gregory Rosgove; Married Love with musician Rufus Wainright and artistic director Jorn Weisbrodt;, and Self Love with actress Aubrey Plaza.

Results

At the time of the campaign, WWD reported “Gap has been on a tear lately”. The company announced a 60% increase in net income, and a 7% increase in same-store sales for the Gap brand (the best in nine years), and finished the year as one of the top performers on the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index. 

MARKETING ADVISOR

Dr. Marion Parke is a MN-based foot surgeon and luxury footwear designer. Her first collection launched in 2016.  

"Like the women who wear them, my shoes are more than beautiful - they’re designed to perform. With biomechanical innovations you can’t see, but will feel the moment you put them on. The technology is invisible; you never will be."

PRESIDENT, PETERSON MILLA HOOKS

Select Comfort enjoyed brisk sales when it invented the Sleep Number – the setting at which your mattress delivers your ideal comfort and support. The business was especially successful with an older customer who suffered medical issues and back problems. At the time, Sleep Number effectively targeted this customer through vehicles like QVC and late-night, long-form infomercials.

 As sales began to stall, however, customer segmentation work showed the need to move to a younger, more health-conscious customer – one less plagued by medical problems and more concerned with optimizing health. 

The “Know Better Sleep” campaign positioned good sleep as the third leg of a healthy lifestyle (along with nutrition and exercise), and explained why Sleep Number technology was essential to your best night’s sleep. Because of Sleep Number’s infomercial past, it was important to overcome a “gimmicky” perception of the brand and update its dry, brochure-like approach to communications.  By elevating the brand’s aesthetic, giving it personality and emotion, and presenting Sleep Number’s technology in a more human way, “Know Better Sleep” improved credibility scores and created new momentum for the brand.

Results

The first year following the launch of the new, multi-channel campaign, Sleep Number's net sales increased by 40% and same store sales grew 22% YOY. 

PRESIDENT, PETERSON MILLA HOOKS

While Children’s is the leading pediatric hospital in the Twin Cities, the metro has two other children's hospitals that vie for patients and charitable donations. They also faced increasing competition from the expansion of general-patient hospital groups and aggressive marketing by venerable out-of-town institutions such as Sanford Health and the Mayo Clinic.   

Adding to the confusion of this cluttered marketplace, hospital advertising was a sea of sameness – research credentials and care statistics, highly produced photography, casts of happy, smiling patients and doctors, and saccharine soundtracks. 

Research showed while most parents were aware of the Children’s brand, those who hadn’t been there didn’t understand how the Children's care experience was unique.  As such, we felt the job for the campaign was to demonstrate to parents (and potential donors) what made Children’s Children’s.

“That’s why we’re called Children’s” pulled back the curtain to share the authentic personalities and passion of Children’s staff. Spending two days inside the hospital with a skeleton film crew (camera operator, sound technician and director), we captured genuine interactions between staff and patients. Print, outdoor and digital work featured actual patients with messages about Children’s kid-centric philosophy.  This honest, unvarnished portrayal of Children’s brought the hospital to life in a fresh, unexpected and differentiated way.

Results

The campaign gave a major boost to top of mind awareness, ad recall and persuasion.  Market share increased by 2.3% (a major shift) and year-over-year annual giving increased by 39%.  Additionally, Children’s registered 50,000 more visits to their website than the previous year, with 77% of these visitors new to Children’s.

CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER

Our analytics team discovered that we were under-represented with 18-24 year old men, and had a major opportunity to grow profitable share with them. “Tech to the Rescue” was a content experiment precision-targeted to this group via our social channels. The show featured two employees, Mike and Tony, who dished out advice in a Love Line-like manner. No matter what problem a caller described, a piece of technology was always the answer. 

In FY19, Evereve’s customer growth had stalled. Despite tripling its marketing spend and opening more new stores, new customer acquisition fell 5% from the previous year and customer retention declined slightly as well.

Compounding these disappointing results was the tepid response the company’s new “Joy” branding initiative. The brand, with its bright colors and youthful energy was being mistaken by some for a fast-fashion juniors’ label, confusing (and repelling) the company’s target demographic.

We began with a deep exploration of Evereve’s brand values, audiences, and aspirations. What followed was a complete reimagining of the brand identity—from visual language to tone of voice—resulting in a fresh, cohesive, and elevated brand expression targeted at women aged 30-50 who seek modern, on-trend styles.

The result was more than a refreshed look—it was a brand evolution that resonated across every level of the business. Evereve emerged with a clear, confident identity that reflected the modern woman’s lifestyle, strengthening its relevance and reach.

This strategic transformation translated into measurable growth over a five year period, with notable increases in customer acquisition, retention, and overall brand performance—proving that when a brand tells the right story, the results follow.

Results

• 2X+ growth of customer file, from 1M in 2019 to 2.2M in 2024
• 120% increase in annual new customer acquisition
• 1,100 bps improvement in customer retention rate
• 170% revenue increase, from $140M in 2019 to $390M in 2024
• 430% increase in E-Comm revenue
• 250% increase in A-EBITDA

Tom is an accomplished Marketing, Growth and Creative executive with deep retail experience and a strong track record of building brands, igniting growth, and developing high-performing teams.

He currently serves as Chief Marketing Officer at Evereve, a fast-growing women’s fashion retailer with 110 stores across 32 states, where he’s led a comprehensive brand and marketing transformation—more than doubling revenue, profit, awareness and customer growth, and evolving the business from a regional player into a burgeoning national brand.

Prior to Evereve, Tom was Chief Creative Officer at Best Buy, where he oversaw creative, content and design across the company and built a 100+ person in-house agency and creative studio. By creating high-impact campaigns and delivering record-setting ROI performance, he helped drive eight consecutive quarters of market share gains and profit growth during Best Buy’s well-documented turnaround.

Earlier in his career, he held roles at Fallon and Wieden+Kennedy, co-founded the creative startup One&All, and served as president of Peterson Milla Hooks (PMH)—a boutique creative agency specializing in retail, fashion and lifestyle brands. Under his leadership, PMH doubled in size, earned two Grand Clios in the fashion category, and was named Advertising Age’s “Comeback Agency of the Year.”

Tom’s experience spans small, up-and-coming brands (Red Wing, Marion Parke), iconic global brands (United, Coca-Cola), and well-known retail brands (Gap, Athleta, Sephora, Target designer partnerships). He’s managed teams in the US, UK, Europe, South America and Japan and serves as a member of the ANA’s CMO Global Growth Council.

INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP
• CMO Global Growth Council - Brand, Creativity & Media Innovation
• Presenter, ADWEEK Marketing Vanguard CMO Conference
• Presenter, Belardi Wong Summit - “Evereve: A Masterclass in Brand Building”
• Grand Jury Judge, DRUM North American Marketing Awards
• Keynote speaker, Advertising Age Brand Summit, “Bringing Agency Thinking In-House”
• ANA Masters of Marketing - “Data & Creative: An Unlikely Love Story”
• Final Round Judge, EFFIE Effectiveness Awards