By Elena Vasquez

Dove Men+Care handed out 30,000 miniature deodorant samples and 1,000 custom 3D-printed "Max Packs" at New York Comic Con this month, as the Unilever body-care brand made its second straight appearance at a convention that drew roughly 250,000 attendees to the Javits Center.

The activation solved a specific cosplay problem: sweat. "You are putting months sometimes into your costume. It is a long day, heavy layering. You're on the floor a lot, and sweat is really kind of a problem," Lindsey Lapin, associate director of marketing for Dove Men+Care at Unilever, told Marketing Brew.

Why would a deodorant brand go to Comic Con?

The logic starts with audience behavior, according to Lapin. "In recent years, and probably since Covid, it seems like men's passions, hobbies, fandoms are more diversified than ever before," she said. "I also think, as a personal care and grooming brand, men are interested in our products, but I don't know that most men spend much time thinking about them. Where our men who we're serving and marketing to are spending their time is in fandoms."

NYCC has spent two decades becoming that gathering point. The event has run at the Javits Center since 2006 and celebrated its 20th anniversary this year across four days. Non-endemic brands arrived in force by 2011, when attendance topped 100,000 for the first time and Hasbro and Chevrolet expanded or debuted their involvement. By 2025, mainstream names such as Walmart, eBay and Duolingo had joined them.

Dove Men+Care first appeared at NYCC last year, mainly with product samples, Lapin said. This year the brand broadened its footprint with a digital out-of-home campaign, creator collaborations and a show-floor booth, an approach Lapin said came from identifying the opportunity to storytell in an expanded way and be a bigger part of men's fandom.

What did the activation actually do?

The booth centered on the brand's strongest deodorant product and a practical message for cosplayers. Four cosplay creators — Andrew McLean, Gideon, Con Culture and Frank — were onsite to capture content and share how the antiperspirant supports the cosplay process.

"We decided if we're coming back again and we're entering this sacred space, that we really wanted to provide extra value to the community," Lapin said.

The Max Packs addressed a second common complaint among cosplayers: carrying personal items without detracting from elaborate costumes. Dove partnered with Galactic Armory, a 3D-printing company popular in the cosplay space, to run live printing demonstrations and distribute the 1,000 packs at designated times throughout the convention.

Elsewhere on the show floor, entertainment properties still dominated. Peacock built a Camp Crystal Lake experience for its "Friday the 13th" prequel series "Crystal Lake," and Paramount Games displayed a 10-foot-long crocheted Appa toy to launch the video game "Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game."

How does the brand measure success?

Dove Men+Care is tracking social engagements and earned coverage to gauge brand salience (the degree to which consumers recall a brand), a priority over conversion and sales, Lapin said. Immediately after the weekend, the brand reported 3.1 million total impressions and six earned media placements.

That restraint reflects Lapin's broader philosophy. Her team looks for events where "performance and passion intersect," and she argues brand presence at fan events should solve pain points and lend "consistency and longevity" to brand storytelling. Fan events are, in her words, "sacred spaces," and audiences now expect brands to be there — a expectation that raises the bar for anyone hoping to make a positive impression.

The early signal suggests the approach works. "The best response that we can get from the last two years where we have been exploring fandom spaces is like, 'Oh yeah, like I can't believe a deodorant brand wasn't here before,'" Lapin said. "That tells us that there's not only a good reason for us to be there, but that we tapped into something."

Dove Men has ramped up its presence in fandom communities over the last two years, and Lapin said the brand is still working out how to connect its products to fan spaces even further — which points to more conventions, and more utility-first activations, ahead.