The Holy War between BYU and the U of U isn?t just limited to the football field; the red and blue continue to clash in the advertising departments of both schools? newspapers.
The advertising directors from both papers wanted to have a little friendly competition to see whose ad team could sell more ads. The Daily Utah Chronicle ad director Jake Sorenson challenged The Daily Universe?s ad director Casey Stauffer to a friendly competition between the departments.
?The rivalry Tabloid idea came about from a meeting Jake Sorenson and I had during an advertising conference in New Orleans back in March of this year,? Stauffer said. ?Jake challenged me that his ad staff could outsell my ad staff as easily as the U could beat the Y in football. Clearly change is in the air, as the DU ad staff soundly thrashed the Chrony staff by selling 59 percent of the ads in the tabloid compared to the 41 percent sold by the U.?
The advertising departments decided to expand the rivalry package, instead of the usual editors? competing articles trash-talking the other school?s football team; they decided to expand it to a 32-page rivalry section chalked full of articles exploring the inadequacies of the opposing school and its football team.
?Each year our editorial staffs had exchanged articles written by the sports editors,? Stauffer said. ?Jake and I thought instead of just dedicating one page in our papers to the rivalry, why not do an entire publication on the rivalry? We began the tabloid projecting the publication to be roughly 32 pages in size. After the smoke of ad sells cleared, we ended with 48 ? apparently we were conservative.?
All of their combined hard-work contributed to the final product? a 48-page special section enthusiastically devoted to the blue and red rivalry.
Inside you will find the hard work of writers, editors and ad staff from both BYU?s The Daily Universe and the U of U?s The Daily Utah Chronicle.
