On my first year at Corsair, we were preparing for Quake Con, and needed to come up with unique swag items to giveaway at the event. Someone jokingly said “Deodorant!” and then filled me in on a long running body odor problem the convention had, a problem so serious that it was not uncommon to see signage at the event urging people to use deodorant.

Well, what others laughed at as a throw away joke, I saw as an opportunity, and created the BO55, a “gaming deodorant” that was named and styled to be like a real Corsair product. I then went on to source two thousand units of white label deodorant, design and order a ton of stickers, and work with my team to adhere them to deodorants and bring them to the show.

Reception

Because we framed it as a joke not just at the community, but our own often hyper-performance-focused marketing, people loved it. It went viral on reddit, and people rushed to our booth the entire show trying to get one.

It was a joke that went over so well, and was so cheap and easy to make, that it has become a yearly tradition for us as you can see here from one user’s photo they posted to reddit:

Viral Success & Legacy

Our fans both at the event and hearing about it from home loved it, and caused it to go viral on reddit, reaching the front page, when we announced an “RGB Version” coming soon. We even had people flooding our comments asking to buy the deodorant or asking for us to bring it to PAX West

Even when the pandemic came and QuakeCon was no longer able to be held in person, the BO55 was celebrated on the QuakeCon official discord with a “Design Your Own BO55” contest, hosted by Tyler Piva and Tim Fangon.

It was even made into an emote for the server! Drawn by Jasbutts!