Courvoisier took 700 phones at the door, then put disposable cameras in the bathroom

In brief. On October 22, Courvoisier hosted 700-plus guests at Ideal Glass Studios in New York’s Greenwich Village and sealed their phones in pouches at the door. Team Epiphany produced a house party across two floors: living room, kitchen, game room, confessional closet, upstairs bedroom, and a bathtub full of disco balls with disposable cameras nearby. Photos went out afterward through a link. The lesson: when you remove the phone, the rooms and the props have to carry the memory and the content.

On October 22, more than 700 people walked into a Greenwich Village mansion, sealed their phones in pouches and gave a passphrase to get inside. In the bathroom, they found a tub full of disco balls and a set of disposable cameras.

House of Courvoisier launched Pass The Courvoisier, the brand’s first global campaign in nearly 20 years, created with BBDO Paris. Team Epiphany handled creative development and production, and the NYC collectives Fun With Friends and Missing Ingredient brought their communities and their music.

Two numbers sit behind the idea. BizBash reports Eventbrite data showing phone-free events up 567% globally, and Courvoisier’s own Censuswide research says 60% of U.S. and U.K. respondents formed some of their best memories at someone else’s home. Those are a platform’s and a brand’s figures, so read them that way. We’ve written about phone-free activations before, but this one raises a sharper question for whoever’s doing the build: what do the rooms have to do once nobody’s filming?

Across two floors of The Mansion at Ideal Glass Studios, the layout follows a house party, and each room gives people something to do.

None of that is exotic, which is the point. Very little of it depends on a screen. A game gives you a reason to stand next to a stranger. A quieter floor gives you somewhere to go when the music gets loud. That’s circulation planning doing the work a branded photo wall would otherwise do.

BizBash doesn’t say how much was built and how much came with the venue, which already has black walls, contemporary art and a fireplace. In the photos, the bathroom reads as the biggest set piece, with red tile, a checkered floor, damask walls and mirror balls.

Courvoisier moved the capture instead of dropping it. Disposable cameras in the bathroom, a video closet, and developed photos shared afterward through a dedicated link. That link reaches guests after the party, and it arrives with film photos they took themselves.

There’s a cost. No phones means no live posts from 700 guests that night, and you should say so when you pitch it. The trade is a slower trail of content in exchange for a room people are fully present in. For a premium brand launching to a real community, that can be a fair deal. For a mass awareness brief, maybe not.

Brience is a Toronto-based custom fabrication and experiential design studio, and the build lesson here is simple: if you take the phone away, the props have to be physically good. People will hold them and sit on them with no phone in the way.

Give guests something to do with their hands. A station where people choose the music, make something or write on a shared wall gives the room a focus that isn’t a phone, and a reason to stay near each other through the night.

If you’re planning a holiday party or a launch in the GTA and thinking about going phone-free, budget for the objects first. We can help you work out which ones matter.

Source: BizBash, “Why Courvoisier Hosted an Old-School, Phone-Free House Party in NYC” (November 2026). Censuswide research was commissioned by Courvoisier. Phone-free event figures are Eventbrite’s, as reported by BizBash.