Love Needs Honesty.

I first saw the bunnies on the subway a couple weeks ago on my way to work. Impossibly long-eared, they stared down at me, the text around them commanding me: “Look into my eyes! Bunnies never lie!” The rest of the anti smoking ad resembled a third-grader’s conception of cuteness: multi-colored hearts everywhere, vines crawling up the sides, and birds emitting music notes and tweets inside yet more hearts. After seeing it on a few different trains, I sent an email to the address listed on the ad. The advertiser and designer turned out to be G Mailit Creations, a one-man company run by Alfred Brotter, an 82-year-old Bronx native who made a bunch of money in real estate and is now living in Florida.

VICE: Was that subway ad your idea, or were you just the agent for someone who wanted to put it up?

Alfred Brotter: I had been studying various philosophies, mostly Richard Wetherill and his humanetics, and he claims that the human mind cannot be penetrated from the front of the brain, it’s clogged up with too much stuff. Most anti smoking campaigns connect to the front of the brain and the important message never penetrates to the brain center receptors—and a receptor message must also connect to the back of the brain. The G Mailit creation does just that. Love, honor, mortality, happiness— when all four are targeted to a habitual smoker, can it be easily dismissed?

It’s very difficult because a person who smokes is a smoking person. In order for that person to stop smoking you have to murder the smoking person. I was a smoker and I didn’t want my kids to smoke so I stopped. I knew if I smoked my kids would smoke. Usually if two parents don’t smoke its very unlikely that the children will smoke.

About eight million lives are lost worldwide by smokers. Translated into languages everywhere, I believe the message and focus on this anti smoking creation could prove responsible for saving at least one million persons’ lives, or for having five million persons retain their much-needed loved ones.

The question is, will Michael Bloomberg want to buy this thing? He could distribute it worldwide in many languages—the question is how to approach him about it. I wrote a letter to him hoping his office would give me a call and I could fly to New York and talk to him.

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