McKinney has hired Omid Amidi and promoted Lyle Yetman to co-CCO roles. Amidi and Yetman will report to McKinney CEO Joe Maglio and will be charged with driving the creative vision for the growing agency.
Yetman is being promoted to co-CCO from his role as McKinney executive creative director. Yetman joined McKinney in 2015 as a group creative director before being promoted to ecd in 2022. During his tenure at the agency Yetman has helped McKinney’s growth, leading wins of marquee clients including Popeye’s and Little Caesars. He will remain based out of the Durham, North Carolina office.
Yetman said it was important for him to find creative partner who complements his experience and brings a different cultural POV to McKinney. It was also important for that person to be based out of another one of McKinney’s growing offices and to bring a different perspective to the position.
“In Omid, we not only found a great creative mind with experience at cutting-edge creative shops around the world, but an international student of culture based in New York, a cultural hub and one of our fastest growing offices,” Yetman told ADWEEK.
Amidi joins McKinney from creative agency Fig, where he has served as executive creative director since 2022. At Fig, Amidi helped to win new business with Viator and Skyy Vodka, while also leading work for clients Zillow and SeatGeek. Prior to Fig, Amidi spent five years as a creative director at Johannes Leonardo, where he helped win and lead accounts including Adidas Performance, Bleacher Report, EA’s Madden and Gap. As a creative at Pereira O’Dell, Amidi led Coca-Cola’s largest initiative ever in Latin America. He will be based out of McKinney’s New York office.
Amidi told Adweek that, with him based in New York, he can help to identify emerging trends in real time and make connections for clients across all five of McKinney’s offices, in Durham, New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Dallas.
“But of course culture is happening everywhere, so Lyle and I will continue to foster a culture of curiosity and connectivity for everyone at McKinney,” said Amidi.
Maglio told ADWEEK that, based on the agency’s growth, he looked across McKinney’s model and determined that having co-CCOs would give the agency and its clients several key benefits.
“First, based on our size today, having co-CCOs allows us to cover more ground and be in more places to address both the agency and our client’s needs. Second, I believe that our industry has generally become more collaborative, and having two incredibly talented and awarded creative minds with unique viewpoints setting the agency’s vision together will be really powerful. While Lyle and Omid will partner together at a high level, they will also lead their own accounts, and based on that approach, there isn’t a need to have either of them in any specific geography,” said Maglio.
Amidi and Yetman take over the CCO role from Jonathan Cude, who led the agency to its most notable and award-winning work and has been with McKinney for over 20 years. Cude served as chief creative officer for the past 16, but now moves into a new role as creative chairman at the agency. This newly created role will allow him to support the new CCOs by deploying as needed across the agency’s client roster to bring additional senior-level creative expertise to their business.
“I’m extremely proud of the journey McKinney has been on to become the agency we are today. With our year-end accolades, overall success and momentum, this was the right time. It’s been my joy and privilege to serve as McKinney’s CCO for so long. Now it’s time for me to assist Lyle and Omid as they help lead the agency into its next chapter,” said Cude.
Maglio said that Yetman will continue to work closely with clients where he has a deep relationship, and Amidi will offer a fresh perspective to Yetman and those teams as needed. Amidi will forge his own relationships with existing and new clients over time.
“What I love about this partnership is the appetite to collaborate but also the ability to lead independently,” said Maglio.
The new creative leaders also see a future in performance marketing through creative excellence.
“If you’re not focused on creative excellence, you’re not optimizing the investment in performance. McKinney makes work that works—you can see it in the business results for our clients over the past couple years. And much of the work that is really strong creatively is also driving performance. At the same time, when you go further into performance-based media, what I’m equally excited about is tapping into the amazing media and programmatic team at McKinney,” said Amidi.