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Carmen Fadel
Company
WILDE
Location
Boulder, Colorado, United States
Bio
I'm a marketer who loves mixing creative ideas with strategic thinking, especially when it comes to growing brands at fast-paced startups. My approach is rooted in storytelling and data-driven insights, aiming to build brand awareness, relevance, and engagement. I've led dynamic marketing strategies that have not only fueled brand growth but also deepened customer connections. I was instrumental in the launch of MushroomRoot™, establishing a new market category by fostering education, connection, and innovation. I've turned online communities into strong brand advocates, underlining the power of community activation and strategic marketing in driving brand success. Above all, being a mother to four incredible boys is my most cherished role. They keep me grounded, focused, and continually inspired.
I'm a marketer who loves mixing...
description
WILDE is the story of AN IMPOSSIBLE SNACK MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH RELENTLESS HUSTLE AND NEVER-GIVE-UP ATTITUDE We ditched the potato and transformed 100% all-natural chicken into delicious thin & crispy chips. So good, we deserve to be a little cocky. WE EXIST FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO LIVE LIFE NOT WATCH IT WHAT WE MAKE We make impossibly delicious “Complete Protein” chips with all the texture of your favorite potato chip and no trade offs. Starting with fresh lean cuts of protein from local farms drives our taste and crispy textures. We want you to feel good about high protein, low sugar snacking with zero trade off because lifes too short not to enjoy the snacks you love. A MORE COMPLETE CHIP While it's important to get enough protein in your diet, it's also crucial to ensure you're getting the right type of protein. Protein is composed of 20 amino acids; 11 of these amino acids are produced by the human body. For good health, we must get the other nine amino acids (called "essential amino acids") from the foods we eat. When a food contains all nine of these amino acids, it is called a "complete protein.
WILDE is the story of AN...
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Actionable Takeaways
Clarity Is Your Only Advantage in a New Category:
When consumers have no existing format to correlate a product to, the entire marketing job is to make it instantly understandable in three seconds — WILDE's philosophy is to "dumb it down" and eliminate every possible point of confusion before the first taste.
Shock and Disbelief Is a Conversion Engine:
The "wait, this is made from chicken breast?" moment of disbelief is WILDE's most powerful marketing asset — Carmen leans into it deliberately, because that genuine reaction triggers curiosity in others and turns customers into brand evangelists.
Chips and Lips Above Everything:
Getting the product into someone's mouth is the single most important marketing objective at WILDE at all times — because the product converts at an extremely high rate once experienced, every channel and dollar points toward enabling trial.
Natural Protein vs. Added Protein Is a Real Moat:
Competitors like Quest add whey or pea protein to achieve macro numbers, requiring taste trade-offs; WILDE's protein comes entirely from chicken breast as the first ingredient, meaning the taste advantage is baked in and cannot be easily replicated.
AI Is a New Distribution Channel for Brand Discovery:
When a consumer asks an AI for "high protein snack" recommendations, the brand that surfaces wins the consideration; Carmen is treating AI search as a new SEO channel that requires its own presence-building strategy — a challenge most CPG brands have not yet addressed.
Mixed Media Modeling Earns the Boardroom:
By deploying a Keen MMM platform to overlay sales data and working marketing dollars, Carmen can now show exactly what is moving the needle at the top of the funnel — transforming brand spend from a gut-feel request into a defensible, data-backed case for incremental budget.
The NASCAR Analogy That Actually Works:
WILDE's NASCAR partnership isn't random — the sport is built on precision engineering, optimized performance, and peak physical readiness, directly mirroring WILDE's own commitment to exact ingredients, manufacturing processes, and nutritional design.
AI Speeds Up the Work. Judgment Completes It:
Carmen uses AI daily for speed, ideation, iteration, and competitive tracking — but is clear that no AI output ships without human judgment on whether it's the right move; the tool accelerates the process, it doesn't make the decisions.
Conversation Highlights
Carmen Fadel, VP of Marketing at WILDE, takes us inside one of the most unusual products in the CPG snack aisle — a 100% all-natural chicken breast chip that is growing 50% year over year and landing on shelves at Whole Foods, Costco, Target, and beyond. She breaks down the brand’s “chips and lips” obsession with driving trial, the “shock and disbelief” campaign strategy that turns first reactions into word-of-mouth, and how she used a mixed media modeling platform to turn top-of-funnel brand spend into a board-ready, data-backed argument. From a NASCAR partnership to AI-powered competitive tracking, Carmen offers a candid, practical look at what it takes to build a brand-new snack category from scratch.
Topics Discussed
- WILDE’s origin story: how founder Jason Wright created a 100% chicken breast chip with proprietary manufacturing
- 50% year-over-year growth and the surging consumer protein trend
- “Chips and lips” — the single-minded mission to drive product trial above all else
- “Shock and disbelief” — the campaign philosophy built around the “wait, this is made from chicken breast?” reaction
- Omnichannel strategy: TikTok Shop, CTV (Hulu), OOH, digital ads, and the Critical Mass approach
- WILDE vs. Quest and other protein chips — natural protein from chicken vs. added whey or pea protein
- The NASCAR partnership and what precision motorsport has in common with a chicken chip
- Life Time Fitness sponsorship and community-building through health and fitness events
- AI as a new SEO channel — why WILDE needs to show up when someone asks an AI for a high-protein snack
- Using Claude and AI tools for competitive tracking, ideation, and automation
- Mixed media modeling via Keen — connecting marketing spend to top-of-funnel sales data
- Carmen’s non-linear career: stay-at-home mom of four, side agency, return to CPG, rise to VP of Marketing
