Teperberg Wine Stories Turned Israeli Ad Restrictions Into Cinema
Teperberg's Wine Stories is a 2018 branded entertainment campaign created by McCann Tel Aviv in which the Israeli winery produced three short films — each running approximately thirteen to seventeen minutes — that premiered in cinemas across Israel and were supported by television trailers deliberately designed to resemble movie commercials rather than alcohol advertisements.
The campaign launched in Israel in April 2018 as a direct creative response to regulatory constraints that limit conventional alcoholic drinks advertising in the Israeli market. Rather than work within the boundaries of a standard thirty-second spot, Teperberg and McCann reframed the brand entirely: instead of advertising wine, they made cinema. The films centre on Israeli family stories in which wine functions as a quiet contextual presence rather than the overt commercial subject, allowing the winery to connect emotionally with audiences without triggering the restrictions that govern direct alcohol promotion.
The strategic ambition behind Wine Stories was to reposition Teperberg from a conventional wine advertiser into a producer of branded entertainment — a shift that placed storytelling, not product, at the heart of the brand's identity. In the Israeli market, where alcoholic drinks brands face meaningful constraints on how and where they can communicate, this represented a genuine structural departure from category norms. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 63/100, reflecting its conceptual originality and its uncommon format within a regulated category. McCann Tel Aviv submitted Wine Stories under the entry title "Teperberg Winery Wine" to international award bodies, and the campaign went on to receive industry recognition as documented below.
Israeli restrictions on advertising alcoholic beverages prompted Teperberg to fundamentally rethink its approach to brand communication, according to goldendrum.com. Rather than accept reduced visibility within a constrained media environment, the winery and McCann Tel Aviv identified branded entertainment as a category of communication that sat outside the scope of conventional alcohol advertising rules, creating a legally viable path to sustained audience engagement.
The strategic insight driving Wine Stories was precise: if the law restricts the advertisement of wine, produce something that is not, in legal or editorial terms, an advertisement. The three short films were crafted as genuine narrative works, each rooted in recognisably Israeli domestic life, with wine present as an atmospheric detail rather than a hero product. Television trailers for the films were constructed to read as cinema promotional material — commercials-in-disguise, as documented by goldendrum.com — ensuring Teperberg could access broadcast media without the films being classified as alcohol promotions.
In the broader global context, the wine market was estimated at approximately US $64.1 billion in 2017 and projected to reach roughly US $72.4 billion by 2025, representing a compound annual growth rate of approximately one and a half percent from 2018 onward, according to openpr.com. Within that global picture, the Israeli market represents a small but growing domestic wine culture, and Teperberg operates as one of the country's most established wineries. Competitors such as Carmel Winery and Golan Heights Winery have pursued more conventional brand-building approaches in Israel, making Teperberg's decision to enter the documentary and social experiment format a meaningful competitive differentiator in the local alcoholic drinks category.
Wine Stories was produced by Green Productions, Tel Aviv, in collaboration with McCann Tel Aviv, with creative direction led by Idan Kravitz and Eddie Gartsman, as documented by goldendrum.com. Art direction was handled by Dana Manor, copywriting by Guy Magal, and executive creative direction by Eldad Weinberger and Nadav Pressman. Additional credited contributors include Maor Chen, Adva Navon, Stav Davidof, Uri Margalit, Tal Zagreba, and Dana Lerer, per goldendrum.com.
The creative execution of Wine Stories operates as a social experiment in documentary form. Each of the three films — running between approximately thirteen and seventeen minutes, as reported by goldendrum.com — places real Israeli families or individuals in situations structured around shared experience, with wine present as an unforced connector. The films do not demonstrate product attributes, list grape varietals, or stage tasting scenarios. Wine is simply there, as it would be in life, which is precisely what gives the format its persuasive power: the brand is embedded in human experience rather than placed above it.
The decision to premiere the films in cinemas across Israel rather than release them exclusively online or on broadcast television elevated the campaign's cultural status. Cinema placement positions branded content as worthy of a night out, changing the audience's posture from passive ad recipient to active cultural participant. The television trailers, designed to mimic film promotional material rather than product advertising, extended reach while maintaining the fiction that audiences were being invited to see a film — which, substantively, they were. This layered structure, in which every element of the campaign reinforces the same creative premise, reflects a level of craft consistency that distinguishes Wine Stories within the alcoholic drinks category in Israel.
No verified performance data for Wine Stories — including box office attendance, social reach, or brand uplift metrics — is publicly available in third-party sources. What is documented is the campaign's award recognition: Wine Stories received a Bronze award at the Shots Awards 2018 in the Branded Entertainment of the Year — One-off Project category, as reported by goldendrum.com. This represents one of the more competitive international recognition frameworks for branded film work, and a Bronze at this level confirms that the campaign was evaluated as a credible entry in a global field, not merely a local market curiosity.
Structurally, Wine Stories demonstrates several properties that correlate with effective branded entertainment. The campaign solves a real business problem — regulatory restriction — with a creative solution that generates genuine cultural value rather than simply circumventing rules. The social experiment and documentary format gives the films rewatch and shareability potential beyond the cinema run. The television trailers create a secondary awareness layer without contradicting the campaign's primary identity as film content. And the use of Israeli family stories as the narrative core grounds the brand in local cultural specificity, which is a documented strength in markets where international wine brands such as E. & J. Gallo compete alongside domestic producers. The Clapboard Score of 63/100 reflects this balance: strong conceptual architecture and an unusual format, with room for greater measurable impact or executional ambition.
Wine Stories is a 2018 branded entertainment campaign produced by Teperberg Winery and McCann Tel Aviv. It consists of three short documentary-style films, each thirteen to seventeen minutes long, that premiered in cinemas across Israel and were supported by television trailers designed to resemble film promotions rather than alcohol advertisements.
Israeli regulations restrict conventional alcoholic drinks advertising, according to goldendrum.com. Teperberg and McCann Tel Aviv identified branded entertainment as a format that operated outside those restrictions, allowing the winery to reach audiences through cinema and broadcast media without producing content classified as a direct alcohol promotion.
McCann Tel Aviv created Wine Stories for Teperberg Winery. The campaign was produced by Green Productions, Tel Aviv. Creative direction was led by Idan Kravitz and Eddie Gartsman, with art direction by Dana Manor and copywriting by Guy Magal, as documented by goldendrum.com.
Wine Stories received a Bronze award at the Shots Awards 2018 in the Branded Entertainment of the Year — One-off Project category, as reported by goldendrum.com. The campaign was entered under the title Teperberg Winery Wine and represented McCann Tel Aviv in an international branded entertainment competition.
Dana Manor served as art director on Wine Stories, and Adva Navon is listed among the additional credited contributors to the campaign, as documented by goldendrum.com. Both worked within the McCann Tel Aviv team alongside creative directors Idan Kravitz and Eddie Gartsman and executive creative directors Eldad Weinberger and Nadav Pressman.
Wine Stories holds a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong conceptual foundation — transforming a regulatory constraint into a cinema-grade branded entertainment format — alongside the absence of publicly verified performance metrics that would support a higher effectiveness rating.
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