Mohammad El Tayech

Oct 18, 2023 | mediacatmagazine.co.uk | Mike Piggott |Mohammad El Tayech |Paul Feldwick |Amy Kean

It’s something I’ve been thinking about recently. I was out in Shoreditch the other weekend, a hipster part of east London (or a part that’s sold out, depending on your point of view) and I noticed on Redchurch street (a cool road or a sold out one, same reason) a large advert was going up on the side of a building for Birkenstock, with the tagline ‘Be original’.

Apr 18, 2023 | mediacatmagazine.co.uk | Neha Kulkarni |Mike Chivers |Mohammad El Tayech |Andrew Armitage

We were brought up to nurture faith in hard work…To believe that hard work and perseverance lead to success. There’s the American dream that tempts us all, but there’s also the ancient Indian value system that encourages hard work as Karma. ‘Keep doing without the expectation of a result’, is a phrase most Indians have heard. Over time we learned to glorify hard work and attach meaning to it. We started to associate our identity and self-worth with work. We planned our days around 9 to 5.

Apr 4, 2023 | mediacatmagazine.co.uk | Andrew Armitage |Mohammad El Tayech |Nazli Selin Ozkan |Zach Kemp-Hall

I presume Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst didn’t intend to chronicle the Sisyphean struggle of life with 2000s nü-metal cringe-inducer Rollin, but sometimes inspiration can strike in the strangest of places. Much like the eponymous Greek hero, as outlined by absurdist philosopher Albert Camus’, The Myth of Sisyphus (I promise I’m going somewhere with this), modern life often pits us in an endless cycle of rolling a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down in front of us.

Feb 23, 2023 | mediacatmagazine.co.uk | Josh Tenser |Mohammad El Tayech |Sharon Flaherty |Alistair Vince

What have hope and kindness got to do with advertising, we might ask. It’s a good question. These qualities seem to have deserted us in a long & frost-bitten winter of rolling crisis. Both inside our little world – and out in there in the real world. When everything is broken everywhere — all at once — it’s easy to feel defeat. What’s the point in hoping for better? The ones in power have zero interest in changing an unfair system. One that they created to keep the scales tipped in their own favour.