Batting: Putting owling and planking to shame

“Ben” batting in Baghdad.
(Image from Facebook)
Planking, you are so last month. Owling, you are so last week.

The newest fad of taking photos of your body in an unusual pose in an unusual place is called batting. To do the bat, you hang your body upside down like the nocturnal creature and fold your arms in a V-shape onto the waist.

While planking was the pioneer trend, with thousands of people taking photos of themselves lying face down in compromising situations since the game started in the early 90s, it’s been overtaken by animal poses such as owling, in which one crouches like an owl, and now the upstart batting.

The first known instance of batting in photos can be seen on DoTheBat.com, a Web site that chronicles batters in places from Arlington to Baghdad. You can share photos of yourself batting on the site’s Facebook page. Intrepid batters have already uploaded photos of themselves on trees, pipes and even cubicle dividers.

And now… I hate to even throw out the challenge, but I must.

After we saw
sextagenarian
fitness guru Richard Simmons go planking, we asked him to try out owling. Which he soon did in Paris, clad in a little girl’s turquoise dress and wings. Needless to say, it was quite the sight.

Richard, if you’re out there, can you show us how you do the bat?

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Toyota Donates 100 Cars on Facebook

Toyota’s mid-gear in a summer-long goodwill marketing effort, giving a car to a nonprofit everyday for 100 consecutive days. Running through Aug. 16, the “100 Cars For Good” initiative is centralized on Toyota’s Facebook page, where viewers vote on which of five charities gets that day’s donated vehicle. People do not have to “like” the brand before tallying a vote.

“We wanted to engage and get people to participate with social media,” Toyota spokesperson Tracy Underwood told ClickZ News. “So from there, we said, ‘We need help [from consumers] because we are used to solely interacting with these nonprofit groups.’ This campaign is where we want a lot more participation.”

Today, for example, viewers can vote on the following nonprofits: mental illness organizations Wellspring (Louisville, KY) and Triple R Behavioral Health (Phoenix); seniors healthcare provider Keiro Services (Los Angeles); children’s issues org AnyBaby Can (Austin, TX); and the hospital St. Mary’s Medical Center (Evansville, IN).

Facebook ads and display ads around the Internet have appeared to push the campaign. Toyota also worked directly with the Palo Alto, CA-based social site, providing the causes with pro bono Facebook credits to be used for advertising their organizations.

“Some of them had no experience in social media,” Underwood said. “Now, they are getting ['likes'] themselves. It’s been a nice byproduct to the overall effort.”

Toyota is the latest brand to take a cue from Pepsi’s Refresh Everything campaign. For the last two years, Pepsi has focused on goodwill-social marketing – over mass advertising – while donating funds to local nonprofits across the U.S.

However, according to Beverage Digest, the soda brand in recent months has fallen to third behind Coke and Diet Coke in store sales after spending decades in the No. 2 slot. The Purchase, NY-based Pepsi has since made changes to its marketing leadership, though there have been no ramifications yet on the Refresh Everything or social media fronts.

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Meet up with top voices in search, social, display, and email marketing during ClickZ’s Connected Marketing Week, Aug. 15-19, in San Francisco.

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