Wait, This Is Made From Chicken Breast?

0:00Whole Foods, Costco, Target, Wegmans, ATV, Ivy, Kroger Chains, Albertsons. I can go on and on. We are in every retailer that you can think of.

0:08Carmen Fadel:How has your philosophy for marketing this product worked? Be simple. Make it instantly clear to the consumer what we are. We already have so much against us. There's so much going on. There's not a format they can correlate us to. So we just need to make it instantly clear in whatever marketing initiative that we're doing. everybody's into running into fitness and i'm not sure if you guys are actually leveraging or using that to your advantage as well i mean our community is like everything to us we have a nascar partnership as well it's kind of like our chip processing and the packaging all those things it's just the power of how you can feel your body and how you can feel other things is you know how we did the connection with nascar hey everybody welcome to the show my name is andes figueira and I'm going to be your host for the day.

0:54Carmen Fadel:This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Company, helping fast-growing teams hire exceptional remote talent from Argentina, South Africa, and beyond. We connect companies with world-class professionals who bring skill, reliability, and a global perspective to every role. And just for our listeners, we're offering an exclusive 10 % discount on your first hire. All you need to do is visit globaltalent.co, click start hiring, and mention the podcast listener discount when we reach out. And today with me here, I am speaking with Carmen Fidel, Vice President of Marketing at Wild, a company that ditched the potato and transformed 100 % all-natural chicken into delicious thin and crispy chips.

1:34Carmen Fadel:So with that said, Carmen, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. So just so that we can hit the ground running, Carmen, would you be able to tell us a bit more about your background, how you came to be VP of Marketing at Wild, and maybe what Wild does in your own words? So currently I sit as VP of marketing at Wild. My story is definitely not linear and non-traditional. And I love that about it. I think it brings a little bit of extra pizzazz to what I bring to the team. But I've always been in CPG. I've always been in brand. I've teetered that line of execution and brand.

2:07And, you know, as I was growing in my career, I got more onto the business side of things. And I truly love understanding the consumer, marketing to the consumer, and figuring out how to solve problems for them.

2:21Carmen Fadel:Okay. I love that. And in terms of how you came to be a VP of Marketing, how long have you been with Wild? And did you start right there or did you start at another position and then grow into the role? My one-year mark at Wild is in May. So I'm approaching that in a few months. Prior to that, I was at Sweet Lawrence. I was there for a little over a year and a half, I would say. Prior to that, I was at Meaty Foods, which is a mycelium food-based company in Boulder. And honestly, I have four children. I'm a mom, and I was a stay-at-home mom for many years prior to this. I always had an agency on the side.

3:00I needed to have that line of work, but I stayed home with my children. When I jumped back in, I was determined to get back to where I would have been had I not pushed pause on my career. So I have been really, you know, heads down working hard to get to where I am happy in my career. And that is currently where I'm at now at Wild.

3:20Carmen Fadel:And in terms of then of Wild per se, it's crazy how you took the potato out of the equation. And then now you're making the 100 % chicken chips. And do you know how long it took for Wild to devise this formula and to make this product into what it is right now? Or has this been since the beginning that you've been creating this? So the founder of Wild, his name is Jason Wright, and he started this about five or six years ago, actually, in Boulder, where I'm located. It is now headquartered in Winchester, Kentucky. He is, you know, in his own right, a genius. He knows how to take ingredients that you would cook with and turn them into something that is non-traditional, like a chip or a cracker.

4:03And the formula today, I'd have to kill you if I told you what we do and how we make it. But like I said, we do own our own manufacturing because no co-man would make it, given that it is meat. You're dealing with raw ingredients. And so it has been a heavy lift to get where the brand is at today and the business is at today. But it has been growing 50 % year over year since it started. So there's clearly a need in the market for a product like this. And now with the protein fad, I wouldn't even call it a fad, but protein being such top of mind for consumers, we can just truly continue to grow at that rate.

4:37Carmen Fadel:I understand. Like in my head, I'm saying if I found some chicken chips that could add to my protein consumption per day, I'd be like, that's a beautiful hack that I would love to have here in Argentina, but it hasn't arrived yet. So maybe this is a market opportunity for wild as well. Of course. Yes. Yes. You know, that is our biggest barrier to entry is is getting someone to think about what does it what does a chip made out of chicken taste like? What does it crunch like? And so trying to get chips and lips, that's what we say. Chips and lips is our number one priority at all times to drive trial.

5:12Carmen Fadel:I love it. I love it. And the markets that you guys are serving, are you just available in the states in every 50 of them? or is it just a more limited market? How's that story going for you guys? Yep, available in the U.S. We're actually shipping to Canada at Costco today, so we'll be crossing that border. And we are in some HEBs in Mexico. I wouldn't say that we are going international at a bigger scale at the moment because we still have work to do in the U.S., but pretty much every retailer you might think of in the U.S., we have distribution in. How has your philosophy for marketing this product worked?

5:49Carmen Fadel:And what have you felt that has been something that really resounds with consumers? Or maybe if you could give us an example of a good campaign that you ran that really worked well. We'd love to hear more about that. Yes. So my philosophy is honestly to just dumb it down. Be simple. Make it instantly clear to the consumer what we are. We already have so much against us with chicken breast, bone broth, egg whites, a chip. Right. There's so much going on. There's not a format they can correlate us to. So we just need to make it instantly clear in whatever marketing initiative that we're doing. And we know once they try it, they're going to love us.

6:24So we just have to get it to make sense to them from the first three seconds. They hear the product, see the product, taste the product.

6:30Carmen Fadel:So it's more about just making that short span of consideration that people have and just making the best of it and having them understand what you guys are from the get go. Got it. Got it. And any example of any cool or good campaigns that really performed well? Anything like that? You know, we like to lead with shock and disbelief in our campaign. So one of the ones that we're actively in at the moment is, you know, something that we're kind of calling like, wait, this is made from chicken breast. Because that's this emotional reaction people have after they try the product, because it's just it doesn't make sense until you try it.

7:08And that shock moment brings other people into that curiosity to want to try it themselves. And so we've, you know, has TikTok content. We're launching in TikTok shop, all of our out of home, all of our digital ads. Everything is about this shock and disbelief.

7:23Carmen Fadel:OK, I love that. I love that. And is there any channel that is really working well or better than the others for you guys? Or is it more like a generic approach in which it's an omni-channel way of looking at things and everything performs relatively the same? Yes. And I will say that critical mass is truly our goal. So we do play in every channel inclusive of CTV coming up. And so mass content, consistent messaging, getting it into the right target audiences, like going into the homes of people who are watching Hulu, who you know have children who might want this product. you're getting yourself closer to that sale, whether they purchase at that moment, we don't know, but you're getting yourself closer to that target high intent purchaser.

8:10And so all of our channels have different strategies on who we're trying to reach. And we have different consumers in those channels. And then we just cast wide and critical mass.

8:20Carmen Fadel:And now, Carmen, in terms of Wild as a company, do you guys follow a remote first style of working? Or are you all in a headquarters at Boulder in Colorado somewhere? Or how does that work for the company? Our headquarters is in Winchester, Kentucky. We have 150 employees who make the cracker, pack the cracker, ship the cracker, all of the necessary things to get it on shelf. The remaining maybe 40 people are around the country. So East Coast to West Coast, we have teams everywhere. My team is scattered across the country and we all make it work. It's actually it's convenient. Like I said, I'm a mom, so I have to drive my kids to school.

9:00Sometimes I pick them up. So that flexibility is really needed in my life. I actually probably wouldn't have been able to go back to work had COVID not happened and remote culture changed the way brands like Wild and bigger CPG companies operated. Because it gives me the flexibility to do to do both and do them both well.

9:19Carmen Fadel:And OK, in terms of now that I know that you guys have a very U.S.-based team, but it's kind of remote. How are you leveraging AI nowadays within Wild? Is there any interesting ways that were particular ways that you're using AI? I've always been an early adopter of many tools and tech stacks. And so I use it daily personally and for work. But honestly, I use it for speed, whether it's ideation, iteration, testing. I use it to kind of just gut check some ideas. Let me think of a reason or a way. So recently today, I was using Claude and I added a skill to track our category competitors and to put it into a spreadsheet on a weekly basis.

10:06So it's something that I would typically do to have, to see, to send out to leadership. and now I just have it downloaded automatically and Claude's doing it in the background. So taking those nuanced things and making them automated really helped me and they gave me my time back and I need my time to think, to ideate, all of those things.

10:24Carmen Fadel:Like AI has brought the best out of people with that. It's that you can make it have the more mundane tasks to do and that way you can focus on what really matters and you can just focus on the curation through the human taste of the things that the AI might spit out that are more generic, more standardized, and maybe not that personalized to what you need. It doesn't replace judgment, right? It doesn't replace judgment. So regardless of what it's outputting or what I'm using it for, I still need this and I still need to be able to decide whether that's right. Is it the right move? All of those things.

10:59So people need to remember that.

11:02Carmen Fadel:People have the fear that AI is going to come and take everybody's jobs. But in terms of AI for creative tasks, you still need human taste and human judgment to make sure it's okay. It can do more mechanical and the more, I imagine now spreadsheets are something that AI is going to take over because they will analyze all the data, then they'll spit out what they think. And that's when we come in now and we form part of it, of a higher part of the process, which I really appreciate because I'm also a very, what's it called? Not early adopter, but I love trying everything that's coming out because I feel there's an update every single day.

11:40Carmen Fadel:So it's hard to keep up. And I'll say too with the AI thing is that brands now, and I honestly, like I just started researching this. I need, that's like another channel because when people search, I want a high protein snack. I need to make sure Wild shows up in that list. I can't guarantee that's going to happen. It's another form of SEO. It's a search engine and we have to treat it like a new channel and it's, we all haven't done that before. So there's another channel. we have to throw in the mix to make sure we show up when people are searching for protein, for snacks, for whatever it is.

12:11Carmen Fadel:Carmen, in also talking about Wild per se, how are you guys in terms of competition? Are you the only 100 % protein chip out there? Or do you have some other competitors that you need to differentiate yourself from and make sure your consumers understand that you guys are the better selection or anything like that? Yeah, we definitely have competitors. There's definitely protein chips. Quest has been around for a while as far as like the OG protein chip. Now, the difference between us and any other chip on the market or snack in general is that they're adding their protein. They're adding whey.

12:45They're adding pea. They're adding some sort of protein. Our protein is coming naturally from the first ingredient chicken breast. And so it is by chance that our product is made from protein. But it is also the reason why it first and foremost tastes delicious. You have to sacrifice taste for a whey or a pea protein added to a snack. You don't have to do that with wild.

13:09Carmen Fadel:I get it. So they are placing these synthetic proteins, or at least the little scoop that you see everywhere into the recipe for the other chips. And this is 100 % natural. I need to try these, Carmen. Oh my goodness. It sounds so good. I'll send you some. I feel like this could be such a good addition to my diet and my day-to-day things that I just eat because it doesn't feel like it gives you guilt and it feels like you're actually eating something healthy for your body. So that's a very nice place to be in a consumer's mind. Yeah, we like to say that we fill the gaps. So we know we're not the breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

13:46Now, we are heavily used at lunch with like a cottage cheese because you can double your protein with dipping it in something. But like we fill the gaps in the day that you're not guilty. like what you said, you don't feel guilty about snacking on something that traditionally is not good for you. You don't have to have that guilt anymore. You can have your cake and you can eat it too.

14:05Carmen Fadel:Carmen, man, in terms of also, I'd love to know, are you guys generating like community with your consumers? And maybe like, I know that nowadays it's not only the protein fad, but everybody's into running, into fitness. And I feel this product is something that merges and meshes very well with this whole trend nowadays. And I'm not sure if you guys are actually leveraging or using that to your advantage as well. Yeah. I mean, our community is, is like everything to us and we nurture it, nurture it hard through sponsorships. So we're, you know, we do a lifetime fitness sponsorship. So we're out when people are racing and they're in that healthy mindset and they're in that shift.

14:42Um, we have a NASCAR partnership as well. And so that might not feel like one-to-one, but it is a little wild. But everybody needs to snack. The drivers, we will send them a display with 40 bags on it and it'll be in their shop. And by the end of day two, they're gone because they can, they fuel themselves, right? So like the connection we make with NASCARs, it's actually a really special sport where the car is dialed in. You have to have like the right dynamics. The driver has to be cued in all of those things, right? That's kind of like chip, right? It's precision in how we make it, in the ingredients, in the processing, in the packaging, all of those things.

15:21So like, it's just the power of how you can feel your body and how you can feel other things is, you know, how we did the connection with NASCAR.

15:28Carmen Fadel:As vice president of marketing of Wild, and now that we are almost at the end of Q1 for 2026, what are your goals and what would you like to accomplish within Wild and you personally towards the end of this year? You know, in the last few years, they were they got really good at distribution like that is that is a solid part of wild. Our performance marketing is an engine that is ticking on the bottom of the funnel. And I was brought in to grow the top of funnel and show how bringing more demand into the business can increase the outputs of everything that we've put into place. So for us, our number one goal for the remainder of the year is awareness, which then increases trial and increases repeat and you get your flywheel effect.

16:12But it's hard for brands to justify spend at top of funnel when you can't understand what what is and what is not working. So I put in a mixed media modeling platform recently through Keen, actually, and we're able to overlay sales data and working marketing dollars to kind of see what is actually moving the needle at the top of the funnel. so that I can actually ask for incremental dollars. And every incremental dollar we get, it goes towards top of funnel because I can say what I would do with it. In the past, I wouldn't have been able to say that confidently. And I know that question is going to come from the board.

16:47We all know that question is coming from the board. And so with confidence, I can say where we should put that money.

16:52Carmen Fadel:Wow, that is so cool. And I just love exactly that. Like nowadays, everything is so data-driven that if you're not able to back up your strategies and your results with what data actually, what's it called, backs it up, just make sure it supports it and you can prove properly that this worked and this did not. It's what allows us to reiterate our strategies that went well and just make sure we keep on focusing on what is going well instead of just trying everything and just taking a shot in the dark to see if it actually hits the mark. And before I do close up the episode, Carmen, I did want to also give you the opportunity to let anybody who's hearing us who is interested in wild chips that wants to try them out, how could they go about learning more about your product, looking it up in where they're at, if it's the States, Mexico, or Canada, if I'm not mistaken, what would be the quickest way to be able to obtain some chips to try them?

17:43Email me. I'll send you something. No, I'm just kidding. Whole Foods, Costco, Target, Wegmans, H-E-B, Hy-Vee, Kroger Chains, Albertsons. I can go on and on. We are in every retailer that you can think of, that you're main shopping. Instacart, right? That's a huge. Sprouts. Everything is huge. Our Instagram, our TikTok, everything is at Wild Chips. It's a big way to connect with my team. We do send people product if you reach out. We have coupons as well. Like I said, chips to lips. So we'll do anything to get any of your subscribers chips.

18:15Carmen Fadel:But with that said, Karim, thank you so much for hopping on the show today. I really appreciate your time, the conversation, the good energy and being able to tell us all about Wild and his chips because it really has been a very interesting one. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. No problem at all. And to anybody who is here still listening and with us, we really appreciate you as well for coming on this episode to hear all about the different personalities that we're talking to and all the different industries that we're learning about. So with that said, I hope you have a good one.