How to Turn Clickbait into a Tipping Point (The Chick-fil-Gay Story)

“The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.” - Malcolm Gladwell

I had major plans for starting 2025 with lots of momentum and new content. But the universe had other plans. My family and I all got sick after holiday travels. Then our dog died. Then Los Angeles burst into flames. It’s been a little hard to concentrate. Thanks for your patience.

This is another installment in a series of extended posts updating my no-longer-available YouTube Book. For the first installment, click here. Let’s get into it.

In the early 2000’s, I was fresh out of college and trying to figure out how to build a career in the advertising business. This meant going to lots of cocktail parties and networking events. At every event, it seemed like all anybody could talk about was this book called The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

In all honestly, I’ve still never successfully read the whole book. But, I skimmed my boss’s copy so that I could carry on a conversation about it. I’ve also had it recapped to me endlessly by half-intoxicated copywriters at happy hours. I think I get the gist.

In the book Malcolm Gladwell explores how small changes can create a big impact when they reach a critical threshold, or “tipping point.” It explains how ideas, behaviors, and trends spread, driven by specific factors and individuals.

Even though I got really tired of hearing about this book, the concept of tipping points stuck with me.

And ever since, I’ve always been on the lookout for tipping point opportunities. Sometimes they happen naturally and you just have to give them a little nudge. But other times, you can create them.

I’ve identified three major tipping points in my YouTube “career.” Today, I’m going to tell you about the first one.

In 2012, things seemed to progressing nicely for the Hilah Cooking channel. I didn’t have anything to compare it to at the time, but it was slowly and surely growing. The search optimization strategy was working, but I was looking for something to get the channel into a bigger spotlight.

My brain is always working on ideas for stunts and gags that can potentially get our work on the radar of new people.

My IDEA: A video that taught viewers how to make a Chick-fil-A style sandwich at home. A copycat recipe. But I also wanted to poke fun at the company’s reputation for donating money to anti-gay organizations by calling it a Chick-fil-Gay sandwich. I also wanted to get a joke in there complaining about Chick-fil-A being closed on Sundays when people are hung over and really need fried chicken sandwiches.

This was long before there was any mainstream controversy around Chick-fil-A, but it was something you knew about if you had gay friends. I thought it would be a popular recipe wrapped in a good joke that would resonate well with our audience.

The video was on our “to-do” list for over a year. While Hilah appreciated the joke, she had never eaten a Chik-fil-A sandwich and wasn’t interested in eating one. I’m from Oklahoma so Chick-fil-A is part of my DNA. I loved it and knew that it had a fanatical base of customers.

Finally, on a road trip, I conned Hilah into eating a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. She begrudgingly admitted that it wasn’t terrible and started working out how to crack the recipe. Part of her researched involved finding and talking to people who had actually worked at Chick-fil-A. The secret ingredient: pickle juice!

We finally made the Chick-fil-Gay video. Our audience DID love it, but it wasn’t the huge success I had hoped for. We got to 7,000 views within the first day (which was really good for us at the time). We even got a little write-up in the Advocate.

Then, a few weeks later . . .

There was suddenly a huge increase in traffic. I checked our analytics and noticed it was coming from the Huffington Post. The day before, the Chick-fil-A CEO made some anti-gay marriage statements. I honestly can’t remember what the details were, but it doesn’t matter - suddenly the company was all over the news. It was an early example of a news story that somehow manages to stir up everybody for different reasons - and therefore generate a lot of clicks and engagement.

The Advocate revised and reposted their original article and it was now on their home page. From there, the Huffington Post picked it up and ran with it. At the time, The Huffington Post was huge and their popular articles would get picked up by dozens of smaller sites. The video was suddenly everywhere, boosted by the controversy. THIS was the viral success I had hoped for from the beginning.

(Unfortunately, this was before we went all-in on YouTube. Most of the sites were using the Blip.tv embed instead of the YouTube video. The total combined views would have been over 10 million in a week, but only a fraction of those were on YouTube.)

This video was a turning point for the Hilah Cooking channel. We got a huge boost in subscribers and the baseline for all our metrics rose. The channel was suddenly on the radars of a lot of influential people. This video opened a lot of doors. We even met a lot of people who ended up being real life friends when we moved to Los Angeles.

It’s important to note that we didn’t change anything about our video format, production style or overall strategy. There was really nothing different about this video other than optimizing for a slightly different “hook” that made it easier for other people to promote.

As you might expect, despite being a really tame video, “Chick-Fil-Gay” was one of our more controversial videos. This was great for the brand. It was an opportunity to articulate our values. Some people were turned off by those values and decided not to watch the show anymore. But I never want to make something that appeals to everybody. I would rather have a smaller community that is focused and engaged.

Other viewers found something that resonated with them and became even more passionate fans of the show. Lots of people just appreciated being able to make a great chicken sandwich at home.

Keep creating,

Chris

Next Time: The second tipping point and our first million dollar keyword.