Israel Lottery's 2015 Dreams campaign by Gitam BBDO uses surreal film storytelling to link lottery play with life-transforming aspiration in the Israeli market.
How Israel Lottery Used a Crocodile to Sell the Power of Dreams
Israel Lottery's Dreams campaign is a 2015 film advertisement created by Gitam BBDO in Israel that uses surreal imagery — centred on a crocodile as an agent of unexpected disruption — to connect the act of buying a lottery ticket with the hope of transforming an ordinary life into something extraordinary.
Launched in May 2015 in Israel, the campaign comprises a single film asset titled Crocodile. The creative proposition moves beyond conventional prize-focused lottery advertising, instead anchoring the brand to aspiration, possibility, and the emotional charge of daring to dream. The crocodile functions not as a threat but as a symbol of sudden, uncontrollable change — the kind of change a lottery win can represent. Per Clapboard's archive interpretation, the animal serves as a visual metaphor for the disruptive moment when an ordinary existence is interrupted by an extraordinary outcome.
The campaign was developed under the leadership of Chief Creative Officers Shani Gershi and Danny Yakobowitch, with Creative Director Sagi Blumberg shaping the executional identity. The film was directed by Eli Sverdlov and produced by Gustavo. Gitam BBDO's relationship with Israel Lottery was well established by this point; according to Calcalist Co Il, the agency won the Israel Lottery advertising account renewal in 2011, with the contract reportedly valued at approximately NIS 40 million annually. The Dreams campaign represents a continuation of that long-running creative partnership, following the agency's earlier 2013 print campaign titled Chance, which similarly explored themes of possibility and unpredictable opportunity, as documented in the Clapboard archive.
Across the Israeli market, the campaign positions Israel Lottery — formally known as Mifal HaPais — as more than a gaming operator, recasting it as a steward of collective hope. The Clapboard Score for the Dreams campaign stands at 58 out of 100, reflecting a creative execution that is conceptually distinctive but limited in documented reach by its single-asset format.
Israel Lottery operates within one of the most legally protected gaming markets in the world. In Israel, private gambling operations were prohibited under the country's legal framework around 2015, with exceptions restricted to two state-authorised operators, according to iclg.com and En Wikipedia: Mifal HaPais, the national lottery, and the Israel Sports Betting Board, also known as Toto-Winner. This duopoly structure meant that the competitive pressure Mifal HaPais faced was not primarily from rival brands fighting for market share in an open commercial landscape.
Instead, the strategic challenge for Israel Lottery and Gitam BBDO was one of relevance and emotional connection. Toto-Winner, the only major legal direct competitor in the Israeli market, concentrated its identity on sports-based betting, leaving Mifal HaPais with the broader cultural territory of dreams, community, and national aspiration. According to Boi Org Il and beaumont-capitalmarkets.co.uk, Mifal HaPais reported approximately ₪5 billion in annual revenue in 2012, the closest available benchmark to the 2015 campaign period, underscoring the scale of the institution the Dreams campaign was built to serve.
The strategic insight underpinning Dreams is straightforward: lottery participation is not primarily a rational economic decision but an emotional act of hope. By anchoring the 2015 campaign to the feeling of possibility rather than the mechanics of winning, Gitam BBDO sought to deepen the brand's psychological contract with Israeli consumers. The surreal disruption of the crocodile device communicates that transformative change can arrive from anywhere, at any moment — a proposition that maps directly onto the lottery experience. This approach also distinguishes the campaign from more transactional gaming industry advertising, which typically emphasises jackpot size or odds.
Director Eli Sverdlov brings the central creative conceit of the Dreams campaign to life through a single, self-contained film titled Crocodile. The production, executed by Gustavo, deploys surrealist visual language to place an unexpected animal — a crocodile — into the fabric of an ordinary Israeli domestic setting, using the creature's presence as a physical manifestation of the idea that life can change without warning.
Creative Director Sagi Blumberg, working under Chief Creative Officers Shani Gershi and Danny Yakobowitch at Gitam BBDO, constructs a narrative grammar in which the crocodile is neither comic nor menacing in a conventional sense. It is simply present, and its presence alone is enough to signal rupture — the moment when the predictable rhythms of everyday life give way to something unscripted. This is the emotional territory the Israel Lottery brand seeks to own: the precise instant between the life a person has and the life they might have.
The music for the film was composed by Tomer Biran, whose score shapes the tonal register of the piece, threading a sense of wistful possibility through what might otherwise read as an absurdist set-up. The combination of Sverdlov's direction, Biran's score, and Blumberg's creative architecture produces a film that leans into metaphor rather than demonstration — a relatively uncommon choice in gaming industry advertising, where product clarity is typically prioritised. The campaign's single-asset format concentrates the entire creative argument into one film, requiring that argument to be legible and emotionally resonant on first viewing. Per the Clapboard archive, the crocodile symbol is interpreted as representing unexpected transformation associated with realising one's dreams, a reading that confirms the film achieves its core communicative intent.
No verified performance data for the Israel Lottery Dreams campaign is publicly available. No trade press reviews from Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, or The Drum have been identified in connection with the campaign, and no verified award wins across major international shows have been documented in available sources, as noted by Clapboard. The absence of this external validation is a meaningful data point in itself, suggesting the campaign was produced for domestic Israeli market consumption rather than positioned for international award-circuit entry.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness must be assessed on the coherence of its creative argument. The decision to build the entire campaign around a single film asset is a double-edged strategic choice: it concentrates creative investment into one moment of maximum impact, but it also limits the campaign's ability to build meaning across multiple touchpoints or audience segments. For a brand operating in the gaming industry with the institutional scale of Mifal HaPais — which reported approximately ₪5 billion in annual revenue in 2012, according to boi.org.il — a single-asset campaign represents a restrained deployment of creative resources.
The surrealist metaphor at the heart of Dreams is conceptually clear and emotionally appropriate for the brand territory, but its abstractness may have limited immediate behavioural response among audiences more accustomed to direct, prize-led lottery communications. The Clapboard Score of 58 out of 100 reflects this tension: a campaign that is creatively purposeful and tonally distinctive, but constrained in documented impact by its scale and the absence of a broader ecosystem of supporting executions.
The Dreams campaign is a 2015 film advertisement created by Gitam BBDO for Israel Lottery in Israel. It features a single film titled Crocodile, using a crocodile as a surreal symbol of life-changing disruption, connecting the act of lottery play to themes of hope, aspiration, and unexpected transformation.
Gitam BBDO created the Dreams campaign for Israel Lottery. Chief Creative Officers Shani Gershi and Danny Yakobowitch led the creative direction, with Sagi Blumberg as Creative Director. Eli Sverdlov directed the film, Tomer Biran composed the music, and Gustavo served as the production company.
The crocodile represents unexpected disruption and transformation in the Israel Lottery Dreams film. Per the Clapboard archive, the animal symbolises the sudden, uncontrollable change that a lottery win can bring, interrupting an ordinary life with the possibility of something entirely different and extraordinary.
Gitam BBDO held a long-standing relationship with Israel Lottery before the 2015 Dreams campaign. According to calcalist.co.il, the agency won the account renewal in 2011 at approximately NIS 40 million annually. The agency also produced the earlier 2013 Chance print campaign for the same client, documented in the Clapboard archive.
The Clapboard Score for the Israel Lottery Dreams campaign is 58 out of 100. This score reflects a campaign that is conceptually distinctive and tonally appropriate for the brand, but limited in documented reach and industry recognition, with no verified award wins identified in available public sources.
Israel Lottery's primary legal competitor in the Israeli market in 2015 was the Israel Sports Betting Board, known as Toto-Winner, according to iclg.com and en.wikipedia.org. Israeli law restricted gambling operations to these two state-authorised entities, leaving no private commercial operators in direct competition with Mifal HaPais.
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