This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Henry Hayes, a UK-based vice president of marketing at Passionfruit, which offers a freelancer network and an AI marketing platform. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
I started doing short-form skits on Instagram and TikTok, mainly observational comedy on Londoners.
It started to perform really well to the extent that my now-boss at Passionfruit found me and said, “Hey, you know how to do fun, engaging, 50-second Reels, can you come in and run a business-to-business marketing department?” And I was like, I might as well give it a go.
In February 2025, I started doing LinkedIn comedy. It started in a short-form, lo-fi style, and I ramped it up last summer, with videos like “Pride and Prejudice – but for marketers,” “Love, Actually – but for marketers,” and “Batman: The Dark Knight – but for marketers.”
We’ll be doing “Pirates of the Caribbean – but for marketers” at Cannes Lions this year.
It snowballed into a weird and brilliant world where we are actually getting good leads off the back of it.
Why my ‘Grand Theft Auto’ spoof resonated on LinkedIn
“Grand Theft Auto Vice City — but for marketers” is by far our biggest project to date.
We used our own internal AI tool, PIP, to put together scripts for me based on integrations we have with LinkedIn on our best-performing posts, and the best-performing posts I’ve put out on my own personal Instagram and TikTok.
With LinkedIn, you can’t be as nuanced as you can be on Instagram and TikTok. You have to go for the big stuff. The bigger the name, the bigger the game, the better the visual cues, the more people understand the narrative, and the more chance you have of it going viral.
The reason “Grand Theft Auto” works well is that straight away, you see me running around like I’m in the game. You then see me getting someone out of the car, and that is a visual cue that everyone who’s played the game understands.
The soundtrack of “Vice City” is one of the best things about the game for me. We know our ideal customer profile — a CMO or VP of marketing aged 35 to 55 — would resonate with that kind of music. Hall & Oates. Grandmaster Flash. Talk Talk. Luther Vandross. Oliver Cheatham.
Why I’ll never use AI to generate my videos
I’ll never put AI into the video. We use AI a lot in ideation and scriptwriting, and a lot in post-production and editing, but I’ll never use it in the visual.
If I’m a creator, I want people to find me credible as an individual, so they ultimately become potential clients of Passionfruit. They’ve got to see the rawness and credibility in my work. I’m trying to get a VP, SVP, or CMO of a big business to engage with my content, and the way to do that is by putting a lot of effort into it.
I’m one of the biggest fans of “Grand Theft Auto.” I spent a bit of time around the house and in the park, seeing how I could do the character movements. Then I downloaded from YouTube the entire “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” runthrough — it’s four and a half hours long. I watched it on the plane to Miami so I could learn the characteristics.
A lot of people have said you get nowhere near the amount of traction that you used to on LinkedIn. The amount of effort I put into LinkedIn — two or three videos a week — would translate to a lot more followers on TikTok than I currently have on LinkedIn. But I’m not out there to make clickbait. I’m presenting this stuff for the marketing world.
