• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, September 28, 2016

Yogurt brand Chobani has selected Wieden + Kennedy to serve as its new lead creative agency, to be led out of the agency’s flagship office in Portland, OR.

The move comes about a month after the brand selected Horizon Media as its new media agency. The yogurt marketer spent more than $30 million on ads in 2015, according to Kantar Media.

Chobani also confirmed Wednesday that it has appointed Lisa Gralnek vice president of emerging platforms, reporting to Chief Marketing and Brand Officer, Peter McGuinness. She previously ran her own brand and strategy consulting business. 

Additionally, Kwame-Taylor Hayford will join the company next month as managing director to lead creative technology and integrated production for the brand, reporting to Chief Creative Officer Leland Maschmeyer, who joined the company in July. Most recently, Kwame-Taylor was a partner at ad shop Sid Lee. 

Commenting on the W+ K selection, McGuinness stated: “We’re proud to be evolving our internal team and our tech and creative capabilities, and proud to be partnering with the best agencies in the world to help tell our story.” 

The brand’s last creative AOR was Droga5. But in March 2015, that AOR relationship ended with the brand indicating at the time that it was taking much of its creative advertising activity in house, albeit while using outside shops on a project-by-project basis. 

But given the company’s double-digit sales growth and launch of a number of new products since then, the decision was made to bring on W+K to help support and sustain that growth. There was no formal review, but sources familiar with the situation said that McGuinness, a former agency executive, was very familiar with W+K’s work and that after a number of meetings between the two firms the fit seemed to be good one. 

The first work from the new partnership with W+K is expected to launch in Q1 2017.