This week: Fantastic ideas to kick off the new year, including a brand's really "hypnotic" experience, added health benefits to your teetotaling and more.

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5. Göteborg Film Festival: The Hypnotic Cinema
Agency: Stendahls

Each year, we can expect something a little outrageous from Sweden’s Göteborg Film Festival, which has made it a tradition to promote itself with mind-blowing experiences, such as sticking a viewer in a tomb or asking guys to get a gyno exam while watching its films. For 2022, the campaign from Stendahls recruits a hypnotist to hypnotize some of the festival’s audiences, and their reactions will be compared with non-hypnotized groups later. The point is to highlight the festival’s theme this year, “Disorder.” Jonas Holmberg, artistic director at Göteborg Film Festival, said in a statement that the experiment aims to “raise questions about submission, transgression and control.”

4. Levi’s: 501 NFTs
Agency: Pavillon Noir

As many of us still try to wrap our heads around the value of NFTs, Levi’s makes the idea a little easier to digest with this campaign. In the push out of agency Pavillon Noir, the classic American denim brand in France is promoting its limited-edition line of recyclable 501 originals with an NFT-driven contest. French consumers who go into the brand’s stores in their country can scan a QR code with a special app for a chance to win a pair of the jeans. Each of the 10 winners also scores an accompanying NFT, which will allow them to get their jeans repaired for free at a Levi’s flagship store until 2127.

3. Apple: Hollywood in Your Pocket
Agency: In-House

This campaign actually snuck in at the tail-end of 2021, but it’s too good not to highlight here. To show off the filmmaking capabilities of its iPhone 13 Pro, Apple debuted a trio of hilarious films that poked fun at cinematic conventions within familiar film genres such as mystery, psychological thrillers or horror. The spots were directed by comedy pro David Shane of O Positive and continue the brand’s “Hollywood in Your Pocket” campaign.

See the third film and more details about the spots here.

Also, Apple kicks off “Hollywood in Your Pocket” campaign with film shot by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow.

2. Corona: Sunbrew
Agency: David Miami

With the start of the year comes “Dry January,” the month when many decide to detox after the holidays and abstain from drinking. It’s also the time when beer brands like to promote their zero-alcohol offerings. Corona was one of those and last week announced the arrival of a new no-alcohol brew, but true to the brand’s heritage, this one comes with a bit of “sun.” Sunbrew, a product conceived with agency David Miami, also boasts a dose of Vitamin D. It’s being promoted with a campaign featuring the tagline “Sunshine, Anytime.”

1. Courageous Conversation Global Foundation: What if they were Black?
Agency: Goodby Silverstein & Partners

Courageous Conversation Global Foundation, the organization founded by Glenn Singleton to improve racial equity in the U.S., kicked off the year with a jolt in yet another eye-opening push from Goodby Silverstein & Partners. In time for the one-year anniversary of the Capitol riots, the organization released a series of limited-edition t-shirts that imagined if the insurrectionists had been Black. The tees are styled in the form of “RIP shirts” worn in the Black community as part of the mourning process and feature Black individuals in the places of familiar rioters. The idea is to jumpstart conversation about the unfair bias Black people in the U.S. experience in the criminal justice system. The backs of the tees highlight statistics such as the fact that in the U.S., Black people are five times more likely to go to prison, and Black men are three times more likely than others to be killed by police.

Watch: How a candy bar illustrated the grave threat of racial bias. 

For more great ideas, bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day at Adage.com/Creativity. 

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