Consider the peculiar problem of the local business owner. Being good at the job and being found by a customer are separate occupations. A plumber can know everything about a leaking pipe and very little about a search listing. For generations, the directory publisher stood between those two worlds. Vivial inherited that position, then tried to carry it onto the internet.
- Vivial bundled local marketing tools with people who helped run them.
- Its digital transformation preceded the Vivial name, introduced in 2016.
- Thryv bought the business in 2022, including 25,000 digital customer relationships.
The revealing detail is the account coordinator. Vivial’s partnership announcements repeatedly mention one: a person assigned to support the business owner alongside websites, content and social media. Amid the software terminology, there was a familiar proposition. Somebody would help keep the machinery moving while the customer went back to work.
A directory was a distribution system
The company’s roots reach back to Loren Berry, who established The Ohio Guide Company in Dayton in 1910. He printed timetables and pursued advertising sales. By the end of that year, he had secured a directory contract with the Dayton Home Telephone Company. The family foundation records that he increased advertising sold for the directory from $500 to $1,200 within six months.
There is a useful clue in that beginning. Berry was selling access to people already looking for something. The telephone company supplied the setting; local businesses supplied the advertising. Much later, search engines would rearrange that relationship. The customer’s need to find a nearby provider remained wonderfully ordinary.
The difficulty was that the setting stopped belonging to the directory publisher. Business information now lived across websites, search results, maps, reviews and social feeds. Buying space in a book could no longer cover the whole job. The owner had more places to appear, more information to maintain and more opportunities to look closed when the shop was open.
First buy the tools. Then change the sign.
In September 2014, Berry’s parent, TBC Holdings, acquired LocalVox Media. The two businesses had already worked together since 2012. LocalVox brought software for publishing and managing marketing across several channels. Berry brought a sales force that, according to the acquisition announcement, covered more than 600 markets.
The fit was fairly concrete: software needed customers, and an established sales network needed something new to sell. LocalVox’s dashboard handled activities spanning websites, publishers, directories, email and social media. Its Social Inbox connected social and review sites. The acquisition attached those capabilities to a business accustomed to reaching local advertisers.
The Vivial identity arrived in 2016. Marketing vice president Laura Cole told industry analyst BIA that the business had already changed its sales structure and approach to market. The new name followed that work.
“For us this is much bigger than a name change.”Laura Cole · Marketing vice president · 2016
That order is worth copying. Changing the sign is quick compared with changing what the sales team can deliver. Vivial’s more interesting decision had happened two years earlier, when its parent bought the missing capability.
The login came with a person
Vivial occupied the space between a marketing agency and a software supplier. Its services included mobile-responsive websites, local search optimization, online listings, content marketing, social media and video. The Marketing Platform brought several activities together. Account support helped turn a collection of features into a service an owner could use.
For a local operator, that could mean getting business details into shape, publishing useful material and keeping social profiles active. For a franchisor, the attraction was coordinating local visibility while maintaining a consistent brand. These are related jobs, but they require different decisions about what stays centrally controlled and what a location can change.
The distribution strategy also carried an echo of the old directory business. In 2017, Frontier expanded its partnership to resell Vivial’s platform. Telecom Consulting Group followed with a master-agent agreement, and TeleDomani joined in 2018. A communications provider already speaking to a business about its telephone or internet service could introduce help with online marketing.
Vivial’s partner materials described recurring revenue and commissions. The model paired continuing service with continuing payment. A business evaluating that arrangement should ask for named deliverables, a reporting schedule and a clear division of work. A dashboard screenshot is a poor substitute for knowing who will write next month’s content.
What Thryv was buying
Thryv completed its acquisition on January 21, 2022. The initial announcement put the price at $21 million. Its later annual report recorded $22.8 million in cash, net of $8.5 million of cash acquired, after adjustments. Those figures describe different stages of the same transaction.
Thryv’s stated audience for a software cross-sell
Thryv’s rationale was explicit: those digital customers were prospects for its customer relationship management software. The buyer saw an opportunity to extend the relationship beyond advertising. Finding a customer could lead to managing messages, appointments and payments.
The transaction also had an uncomfortable side. Thryv’s filing said the seller was motivated to divest a marketing-services business in secular decline. It would be misleading to read the digital rebrand as proof that the economic pressure had disappeared. A company can change its products and still face a shrinking legacy market.
The work after getting found
Today, Vivial’s website directs visitors to Thryv, whose transition page says the online marketing business is now Thryv. That makes the practical starting point different for a prospective customer: evaluate the current Thryv offering rather than assume an old Vivial package is still for sale.
The broader lesson travels well. Consolidating tools can reduce administrative effort. It cannot repair an unconvincing offer, an unanswered inquiry or service that disappoints the person who books. An owner who already has an effective marketing team may need less outside coordination; an owner without time to publish or follow up may need considerably more.
Vivial’s history offers a useful buying question: who does the work between being visible and earning the next customer? The medium changed from a printed directory to a screen full of tools. Someone still has to make the connection.