Exclusive · War and business
When the north emptied out, their customers were left behind. Shapo Digital didn't wait for a ceasefire: it moved their marketing to central Israel, and they grew from there.
One morning the business is running; the next it has no customers. That is how it looked for business owners in the north when the war began. The town emptied, customers were evacuated, the till stayed empty.
Michel Zvigi, himself based in Kiryat Shmona, understood there was no time to wait. "An owner can't pay rent on hope," he says. "If your customers moved to the center, your marketing has to move with them."
So that is what they did. Shapo built northern clients a new presence in central Israel: campaigns aimed at a new audience, landing pages, video and an operation that could take orders in a new place. All during the war, with a team working from the safe room.
Some businesses that started there as a stopgap found a new, bigger audience. When things calmed down they didn't close. They stayed in the center as an additional branch, alongside home in the north.
"That's when I understood our real job," says Zvigi. "Not posting. Making sure the business has customers, even when the world turns upside down."
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