Sponsorship Activation: West Shore Home × Penn State Football
Home Is Where… WE ARE!
The Client: West Shore Home - Official Partner of Penn State Football
The Challenge
Concept
West Shore Home already had the partnership. Their name is on the field at Beaver Stadium. Their logo runs the videoboard seven Saturdays a year in front of a stadium that holds more than a hundred thousand people.
What they didn't have was a way to turn any of that into a homeowner with an appointment on the calendar. Signage builds awareness. It does not build a pipeline. The brief was narrow and hard. Reach Penn State fans on game day, give them a reason to stop, and capture qualified leads a sales team could actually work.
We brought this brand activation to life in five weeks from concept to execution.
Home Is Where… WE ARE!
Penn State fans already have a rallying cry. They don't need a brand to hand them one, West Shore Home understands the one they have. "WE ARE" is a call and response. It's a hundred thousand people finishing each other's sentence. It's the reason a Penn State fan will tell you where they're from before they tell you what they do.
West Shore Home builds homes, Penn State fans call this place home.
The platform lived at that intersection. A photo moment worth stopping for, a game that turned the product into something you could throw a football through, and a conversation that ended with lead capture.
Registration was gated on zip code, a fan outside West Shore Home's service area could not enter, however much they wanted the rally towel. The instinct at an event this size is to capture everyone and sort it out afterward. We sorted at the point of capture instead.
Outside The Gates
Getting It Right
This sponsorship activation footprint sat on the walk to the stadium, in the stream of fans moving from the tailgates toward the gates. You see the letters first. HOME IS WHERE… in white, WE ARE. in Penn State blue, oversized and built to be stood in front of. It stops a group of four and produces a photo before anyone has said a word to a brand ambassador.
Then the Window Toss. Two real windows mounted in a scoreboard wall, mini-footballs, three points a window. Throw, score A West Shore Home product turned into a game you play on your way into a football stadium.
A custom branded cornhole set for the overflow. A fan interaction desk where the conversation actually happens.
State College is not an easy place to activate. It is three and a half hours from Philadelphia, the local vendor and labor pool is thin on a football Saturday. The footprint was outdoors, that meant engineering for wind load on oversized letter faces, rain on printed graphics, and a crew working a full day in whatever the weather gave them.
The whole program went from concept to doors open in five weeks. Design, fabrication, sourcing, Penn State creative approvals, licensed-vendor premiums, freight, and a site plan for a footprint outside Beaver Stadium all compressed into the window between a first conversation in August and kickoff on September 19.
Game day logistics at a stadium that size are their own discipline. Load-in happens in a narrow window, limited vehicle access and assets staged for storage and a repeatable build. B-Side handled fabrication, sourcing, freight, install, on-site management across all three game days, strike, and storage between activations.
Why It Worked
The platform extended a tradition instead of borrowing one. "WE ARE" belongs to Penn State fans. Home Is Where… WE ARE! gave them a place to say it and a reason to stand in front of a West Shore Home logo while they did. Active capture beat passive capture four to one. Handing a fan a QR code puts the work on them, in a crowd, on a dead network.
Every lead was in territory with registration gated on serviceable zip codes, a fan who couldn't be sold to couldn't enter. Beaver Stadium draws alumni from across the country, so that filter was working hard against a national crowd. The pipeline is live. In-home appointments issued and a first sale closed at $19,991 within days of the final game, with the rest still working.
The Takeaway
Brands sitting on a sponsorship they can't convert, the signage is up, the name is on the building, and none of it is producing anything a sales team can use. We build the thing that turns attention into a conversation. If that's the problem in front of you, we'd love to talk.