McKinney has appointed Omid Amidi and Lyle Yetman as co-chief creative officers, effective immediately, the integrated marketing agency announced today. 

Amidi, who joins from creative agency Fig, and Yetman, a McKinney veteran, will lead creative offices in Durham, North Carolina, New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Dallas, reporting to CEO Joe Maglio. Yetman will remain based out of Durham, while Amidi will be based out of New York.

Amidi and Yetman take over for Jonathan Cude, who has served as chief creative officer for the past 16 years of his 20-year tenure with McKinney. Cude moves up to the newly created role of creative chairman at the agency, where he is expected to support the co-CCOs in a mentor capacity.

The agency is still determining the reporting and team structures for accounts, Maglio told Ad Age. The appointments come as the agency has had momentum over the last year, including being named to Ad Age’s 2024 Agency A-List and Best Places to Work honorifics. 

McKinney posted its single greatest year of growth in 2023, boosting revenue by 70% and drawing in a dozen new wins, including Popeyes (for which it created a 2024 Super Bowl ad) and Flagstar Bank. Since Maglio took over in 2018, the firm has launched a Health and Wellness practice (2022), acquired influencer marketing agency August United (2023) and opened a fifth office in Phoenix.

Switching to a two-CCO model made sense given how much McKinney has grown, Maglio said. 

“Our scale has changed significantly over the last few years. We are an agency that has grown 3x in five years,” he said. “What a lot of clients are looking for today is an agency of our size that is fully integrated but that’s not too big where they don't consistently get senior level and, in some cases, C-suite level attention. So, two people could cover more ground than one.”

Amidi served as Fig’s executive creative director since 2022 and was instrumental in helping win new business clients Viator (owned by Trip Advisor) and Skyy Vodka, while also leading work for clients Zillow and SeatGeek. 

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Prior to that, he served as creative director at Johannes Leonardo, leading accounts including Adidas Performance, Bleacher Report, EA’s NFL Madden video game and Gap.

While at Ogilvy in 2011, Amidi helped lead Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign, which was hailed by Ad Age as one of the best campaigns of that decade. He also was behind Zillow’s “There No Place Like Zillow” (Fig), which was shortlisted at Cannes Lions in 2023, and Madden campaigns “The Greatest Play Call Ever,” “The Spokesplayer” and “Stardom Is In Your Hands” (all from Johannes Leonardo).

Amidi aims to grow the agency and “leave his cultural imprint on the work and vision,” he told Ad Age. 

While “effectiveness is the main key to drive business as well as to ensure that creativity is at the front of it,” Amidi and Yetman want to ensure clients know that McKinney is “not just a creative agency, but a fully integrated agency” with multiple offerings, Amidi said. 

Yetman joined McKinney in 2015 and served as group creative director before being promoted to executive creative director in 2022. 
 
He helped McKinney win clients including Popeye’s and Little Caesars and contributed to Little Caesars” “Unlock Pretzel Crust” campaign and its social campaign “Stuffed People.”

“We are at this interesting inflection point,” Yetman told Ad Age. “We’ve grown a lot in the last couple years and I think we’re poised to do some really great things from here on out … I’m just really excited about, creatively, upping our creative product across the board and finding new interesting places and spaces to delve into really honing in on our cultural chops.”