On August 28, 2024, Clarins Canada ran an event at the Phi Centre in Montreal, and Booth Empire delivered the centerpiece activation: a custom confessional video booth with a double-sided printed enclosure designed for the brand. The activation gave Clarins guests an intimate, branded space to record personal testimonial-style content.
This was a custom build, not a configured rental. The confessional format was chosen because of what it produces: video content that a photo booth cannot. Guests stepped into a private, sound-treated recording space, answered guided questions or recorded their own reflections on camera, and walked out with branded testimonial-style content. That output is the reason a beauty brand like Clarins runs a confessional rather than a standard photo activation.
The Brief: An Intimate Branded Recording Space
Beauty brand events live on personal moments. The product on skin, the conversation about ritual, the guest’s individual relationship with the brand - these are the moments a beauty activation is supposed to capture. A standard photo booth does not capture any of that. It captures a posed smile.
The Clarins brief called for something different: an intimate branded space where guests could record personal testimonial-style content. A confessional video booth answers that brief directly. The format produces video, not stills. It produces testimony, not posed shots. It gives guests a private space to speak honestly about their relationship with the brand and the product, which is the kind of content a beauty brand can actually use.
The Custom Double-Sided Printed Enclosure
The build was a custom confessional video booth with a double-sided printed enclosure. That detail matters because the enclosure is what turns a recording rig into a brand installation.
- Double-sided printed exterior - both faces of the enclosure carried Clarins branding, so the unit read as a designed piece of the event environment from any angle in the room
- Sound-treated recording space - the inside of the confessional had to produce clean, usable video and audio, not noisy event-floor capture
- Integrated camera and capture setup - guests stepped in and recorded without needing an operator to direct them through every moment
A confessional with single-sided printing reads as a prop; a confessional with double-sided custom Clarins printing reads as a brand installation. The choice to print both faces was scoped to how the unit would actually sit inside the Phi Centre event space.
Guided Questions and Personal Testimonial-Style Content
Inside the confessional, guests could answer guided questions or record personal testimonial-style content. That is the productive heart of a confessional activation. Two outputs come out of it:
- Guided responses - guests answering pre-set prompts on camera, which gives the brand a library of consistent, structured video content across multiple recordings
- Personal testimonial-style content - guests speaking freely about their own experience with the brand or the product, which produces more individual, shareable video for the guest and the brand
Either output is content a photo booth cannot produce, and either output is content a beauty brand like Clarins can use after the event itself.
The Phi Centre Setting
The Phi Centre is one of Montreal’s most distinctive cultural venues - a multi-disciplinary space that hosts film, art, music, and technology events. That cultural identity shaped the activation in a specific way. A confessional video booth feels native inside the Phi Centre in a way it would not inside a generic function hall. The venue’s identity is built around storytelling and media, and the confessional produces exactly that kind of content.
For Booth Empire, the choice of venue reinforced the decision to build a custom confessional rather than a standard activation. The Phi Centre expects installations, not vendor drop-offs. The custom build was scoped to fit that expectation.
What This Activation Was, and What It Was Not
This case study is the Phi Centre Clarins activation on August 28, 2024. It was a custom confessional video booth with a double-sided printed enclosure. Guests recorded guided or testimonial-style video content in a private, sound-treated space.
What this activation was not: a generic brand photo booth. A confessional produces a fundamentally different output - video rather than stills, testimony rather than posed shots - and that output is what Clarins came to the Phi Centre to capture.
Activation by the Numbers
- Custom confessional video booth built for the activation
- Double-sided printed enclosure carrying Clarins branding
- Sound-treated recording space inside the confessional
- Guided questions and personal testimonial-style recording formats
- Phi Centre in Montreal as the venue
Book a Similar Activation
Booth Empire designs custom activations for beauty brands in Montreal, Vancouver, and across Canada and the United States, including confessional booths, custom video builds, branded photo booths, and bespoke installations for product launches, press trips, and influencer events. Contact Booth Empire to scope a custom confessional or branded activation for your next beauty event, or browse the full case study library.
