Chobani LLC has hired Wieden & Kennedy as its lead creative agency, a major shift after the Greek yogurt maker walked away from the agency of record model in 2015.
Wieden & Kennedy Portland, which had worked with Chobani rival Yoplait, will take the lead on Chobani's overall brand articulation and product campaigns. Chobani said it is also adding to its own team to work on everything from package design to social media.
The change in strategy comes as Chobani, which broke onto the U.S. Greek yogurt scene in 2007, is poised to become America's No. 2 selling yogurt brand.
Wieden & Kennedy's first Chobani work is expected to debut in the first quarter of 2017. The agency is already quite familiar with the yogurt category, as it was named the lead agency on General Mills' Yoplait, the current No. 2 U.S. yogurt brand, in March 2015. But it was not that work that caught the eye of Chobani Chief Marketing and Brand Officer Peter McGuinness.
"I've long admired their work, whether it be Nike or the Levi's Go Forth body of work, or the Honda work or the Open Happiness Coke work," Mr. McGuinness said of Wieden & Kennedy. "They're brilliant storytellers and we have a great story to tell."
Just as Wieden & Kennedy began working with Yoplait last year, Chobani switched from having Droga5 as its agency of record to doing much of its marketing in-house and tapping agencies for project work.
"We're fortunate to have great agencies who have partnered with us at different stages of our growth," Chobani said in a statement to Ad Age in March 2015. "Recently, we decided to change our approach and move from an AOR model to more in-house and project-based agency partners."
Now, however, it will return to an agency of record model while handling some more work internally. Chobani said it did not have a formal review process to select a new agency. It had been working on a project basis with Opperman Weiss, including this year's big Olympic campaign, which Mr. McGuinness said he was proud of.
"We're evolving our capability to grow even more. Things are good at Chobani and we're very, very pleased with our topline growth and our share growth and, frankly, our bottom line growth," Mr. McGuinness said.
Chobani is poised to take the No. 2 spot in the U.S. yogurt market from General Mills' Yoplait. Euromonitor International projects that Chobani will move up a notch to No. 2 and General Mills will fall a notch to No. 3 this year, based on results to date. Groupe Danone's Dannon brand is still the market leader in the United States.
As for Yoplait, the bulk of the ads it is currently running were done by Wieden & Kennedy, with others coming from General Mills' internal BellShop. Earlier this month, General Mills would not confirm the status of its relationship with Wieden & Kennedy given its ongoing creative agency review. Yoplait was one of that company's weaker U.S. brands in the latest quarter.