ImagineAR (IP.C), formerly Imagination Park, has a new name but offers the same old augmented reality crap

ImagineAR (IP.C), formerly known as Imagination Park, has agreed to provide its augmented reality platform to SlapItOn for the launch of its new line of interactive products featuring social media leaders, athletes and celebrities.

That sounds interesting, right? If you read the lede alone you’d probably think that they had a lineup of well-known personalities having maybe stood in front of a green screen for a bit doing promo shots, and mugging for specialized cameras in front of green screns. But you’d be oh so wrong.

“ImagineAR is the most advanced augmented reality mobile platform in the marketplace today. By integrating ImagineAR with hi-tech vinyl decals, we will be launching our new SlapItOn Interactive product line featuring social media leaders in sports & entertainment globally. We are planning to provide a unique platform in today’s world for artists and athletes to engage safely and consistently with fans in their homes,” said Mike Vanderjagt, founder and CEO of SlapItOn.

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to faithful longtime readers of our site. Imagination Park was featured among our rogue’s gallery of companies, which means that when researching this company, you google everything.

SlapItOn is a customer graphics company that makes it money by turning images into decals made from a reusable vinyl. The decals can be cut, contoured and come in various sizes, so they can be put on your wall, locker, tablet or smartphone. This is essentially the adult version of what kids do to their textbooks at school, but instead of cutouts of Metallica and crudely drawn supposedly satanic symbols (that are actually just the Star of David) scrawled on every visible surface of a notebook or textbook, you get pro-sports images that change position based on how the light hits them.

Except instead of a nerdy bifocal wearing math nerd, the company is owned by a group of elite former professional athletes, a few of whom are considered to be among the best of the best.

SlapItOn is owned by an elite group of professional athletes including Founder, Chief Executive Officer and National Football League All-Pro Mike Vanderjagt and co-founders National Football League Hall of Famer and All-Pro Troy Aikman , National Hockey League Hall of Famer and All-Star Mike Modano , Major League Baseball All-Star and Two-Time World Champion Johnny Damon , National Basketball Association All-Star, NBA Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist Steve Smith and National Soccer Hall of Famer and Major League Soccer All-Star Cobi Jones.

For a refresher, ImagineAR is an augmented reality platform that helps businesses with no programming of technology experience implement their own AR campaigns. Any organization, whether it be a pro-sports team or a small mom and pop retailer can develop their own interactive AR campaigns. They point the mobile device at logos, signs, buildings, products, landmarks and anything else they’re looking to capture and engage videos, information, ads, coupons, 3D holograms and other types of interactive content, all lodged firmly up in the cloud and managed using a menu-driven portal. Naturally customer interaction is all tracked and measured using real-time analytics.

That business model sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Like you couldn’t just hire an appreciative unemployed graphic designer, spend some money on some expensive cameras and a software suite, and dole out the monthly subscription for the cloud, and do it all yourself without spending as much money, and without relying on a technology that hasn’t taken off and by all indications won’t be anytime soon.

Now, instead of just having options to turn any image into a decal, this agreement with ImagineAR lets them expand their offerings to deliver interactive products as an ‘all-in-one’ collectible sports card, decal and social media through augmented reality, and put it right into the homes of fans.