He's three metres tall and four metres long, he walks, he talks and he's showing up at community events across the Lower Mainland.
Meet "Baby-T" - an animatronic dinosaur and the backbone of Animal Ads, a new business started earlier this year by North Vancouver resident Matthew Jacques.
Jacques had originally envisioned Animal Ads as a guerilla-style advertising business. The idea was for Baby-T to show up at parades, festivals and public celebrations wearing a paying client's logo on his dino-sized shirt, scarf or tail banner and then wait for the crowds to inevitably swarm.
"It's so simple. We just attract attention and people take our picture," says Jacques, explaining snap-happy spectators then post those pictures and videos to social media sites and the images are shared rapidly - to the benefit of the paying client.
But after a few gigs, Jacques has decided to take Baby-T in a different direction and hopes to take advantage of the educational potential of his lifelike dino. He's currently on the lookout for a corporate sponsor who will provide funding so Jacques can bring Baby-T into elementary schools across the Lower Mainland and lead educational presentations on anti-bullying, peer-to-peer team building, or the environment - followed by a meet-and-greet with the students, of course.
"Kids are just drawn to this thing, and it is something to be in awe of. It's quite spectacular, to be honest, and it's fun."
Sponsorship funding would allow Jacques and his collaborators to produce a high-quality educational program, he says.
"If I take on a large company as a sponsor what I'm doing for them is building a multi-generatonal market. What their money is doing for me is it is boosting what we can do as a company in terms of production for a play," he says. "It's not just me going into a school with a dinosaur. We're going in there with a very interactive, well-written play that carries a very strong message."
The original idea for Animal Ads came to Jacques back in 2000 when he was in a very different line of work.
"I was looking to start a company power washing high rises and I was going to call it Metal Giants and I was looking for a way to advertise myself to stick out from the norm," he says.
His plan was to acquire a 16-foot-tall Incredible Hulk to act as the Metal Giants public mascot."The whole premise was to get people to look, pay attention, remember," he says. "It was just to stand out."
That in-your-face marketing tactic eventually evolved into Animal Ads, but first Jacques needed to find an appropriate mascot.Animatronic dinosaurs similar to the ones used in the live arena show Walking with Dinosaurs or the touring Erth's Dinosaur Zoo based in Sydney are available out of Australia for about $25,000, but Jacques was able to purchase a replica from China for "a fraction of that cost."When Baby-T arrived, he took it to a local movie studio for a fresh paint job and some touch ups. To bring Baby-T to life, Jacques rests the 25-kilogram dinosaur on his shoulders and accesses hand controls inside the dino to turn Baby-T's head, open his mouth, blink his eyes and move his tail. For an added touch, he goes out in public with a "handler" who keeps him on a leash. A voice box allows him to talk and roar.
While his educational program is in development, Jacques is earning plenty of publicity for himself. He and Baby-T appeared at the North Vancouver Canada Day Parade, the Rio Tinto Alcan Dragon Boat Festival and the Vancouver Sun Run, to name a few recent events. He also attends kids' birthday parties pro bono, asking only for transportation costs.Over the years, the entrepreneur has had several business ventures - some that have succeeded and others that have failed. But this one "is just about fun," he says. "It's about little people, and it's about the little people inside of the big people."
