Respect the Bird! 82 Percent of Consumers Say Thanksgiving Drowned Out by Christmas Marketing Noise

SEATTLE, Nov. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Is Thanksgiving as we know it an endangered species?  With Halloween's ghosts barely banished, each year retailers push the Christmas season upon consumers earlier and earlier – and all at the expense of the Thanksgiving holiday.  But the Allrecipes.com community is out to turn that around.  Inspired by community member Doug Matthews' November 2010 blog post lamenting the commercialization of the holiday season, Allrecipes, a Reader's Digest Association (RDA) company and the world's #1 digital food brand, today announced its "Respect the Bird!" campaign: a grassroots movement to savor the true meaning of Thanksgiving and tune out the distractions of Black Friday that have intruded upon Thanksgiving week.

A national survey from Allrecipes found 82 percent of home cooks think Christmas is marketed too early and that the Thanksgiving holiday gets too little attention as a result. Moreover, 42 percent admit being frustrated by Christmas shopping sales that begin before Thanksgiving while 39 percent just try to ignore them.

Allrecipes has created a dedicated site, www.RespectTheBird.com, where Thanksgiving enthusiasts can rally support for the movement. Here, consumers can take the Respect the Bird Pledge, a promise to fully enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday and not begin shopping for the December holidays until after November 24, and get recipes and tips for their Thanksgiving festivities. The site and complementary social media channels (Respect the Bird Facebook community and Respect the Bird on Twitter - @RespectTheBird) will make it easy to spread the movement among friends and family.

"Thanksgiving is an amazing holiday and I believe I was speaking for a lot of people when I wrote the blog post last year about Respect the Bird," said Matthews, leader of the Respect the Bird movement. "I am thrilled that Allrecipes is taking Respect the Bird to a new level with this campaign and I hope it sets a precedence that the holiday be celebrated by sharing thanks and good food with friends and family, not Black Friday shopping!"

With thousands of top-rated Thanksgiving recipes from classics such as Homestyle Turkey, the Michigander Way to exotic side dishes such as Holiday Cranberry Chutney, Allrecipes will be the go-to resource for Thanksgiving meal planning, expecting 28 million visits the week leading up to Thanksgiving day – a 35 percent increase over 2010.

"Allrecipes.com thrives on its vibrant user community of more than 25 million passionate home cooks like Doug Matthews," said Lisa Sharples, President of Allrecipes. "When we saw how our community responded to Doug's blog, we knew we had to help that community express its appreciation for what we all think is truly the best day of the year."

How America Will Celebrate Thanksgiving

So how do Americans plan to Respect the Bird this year? In addition to polling members about their attitudes toward holiday marketing, Allrecipes also discovered the following Thanksgiving trends in its annual survey:

• Thanksgiving dinner is the most celebrated holiday meal with 71% of Americans planning to prepare the traditional meal this year.
• What Americans love most about Thanksgiving is spending time with friends and family (74%), closely followed by eating delicious food (55%) and giving thanks for what they have (53%).
• More than 83% of cooks will get Thanksgiving recipes from food websites, such as Allrecipes.com.
• The majority (69%) plan to spend the same amount of money on Thanksgiving dinner this year as they did in 2010. Cooks looking to save money on holiday food costs plan to do so by purchasing items that are on sale (68%) and preparing dishes from scratch (65%).
• When it comes to choosing recipes for holiday meals, home cooks like dishes with ingredients they can use again (53%) and recipes they've tried before and turned out well (58%).
• As for the food, the majority (88%) will roast their turkey in the oven. The most popular side dishes include classics like mashed potatoes (83%), cranberry sauce (81%) and stuffing (92%), with the majority (64%) cooking the stuffing outside the bird.

Allrecipes.com: Ultimate Resource for Thanksgiving

Home cooks looking for Thanksgiving help can turn to Allrecipes.com's Recipe Buzz where thousands of community members help answer each other's questions every day. During Thanksgiving week Allrecipes has enlisted the help of its most active community members, a group of 100 Allrecipes Allstars who will help monitor the Recipe Buzz and answer the community's burning (or how not to)Thanksgiving questions.

Allrecipes Thanksgiving pages (http://allrecipes.com/Features/Holidays/Thanksgiving/default.aspx) feature everything needed for a fantastic Thanksgiving meal including top-rated recipes, how-to videos, ready-to-go menus, helpful articles and helpful recipe scaling tools for large family feasts. As the #1 food website for 30 consecutive months, and the top Thanksgiving destination for the past 3 years, Allrecipes is America's go-to resource for all things Thanksgiving. For Thanksgiving planning on the go, Allrecipes Dinner Spinner app for Droid, iPhone and Windows Phones is the #1 free food app with nearly 10 million downloads, and the Allrecipes.com Your Kitchen Inspiration app is the top free recipe app for the iPad. Both apps will feature top-rated Thanksgiving recipes during November.  Allrecipes also stocks a robust library of eCookbooks, including the popular 100 Best Thanksgiving Recipes for $3.99 on Nook, Kindle or iPad.  Allrecipes users' with supporting memberships can use the Menu Planner tool to plan their entire Thanksgiving meal from appetizers to main dishes to desserts and get a full shopping list that is scalable for the number of people attending the feast.

About Allrecipes

Allrecipes, the world's largest digital food brand, receives 700 million annual visits from home cooks who discover and share food experiences through recipes, reviews, photos, videos, profiles, and blogs on the web and mobile devices. For 14 years, the brand has served as a dynamic, indispensable resource for cooks of all skill levels seeking everyday and holiday meal solutions. Allrecipes' global, multi-platform brand is comprised of 17 websites, 9 apps, and 13 eBooks serving cooks in 23 countries and 11 languages. Allrecipes is part of Lifestyle Communities @ RDA, a division of The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. For additional information regarding Allrecipes, please visit http://www.allrecipes.com.

About Reader's Digest Association

RDA is a global media and direct marketing company that educates, entertains and connects more than 140 million consumers around the world with products and services from trusted brands. With offices in 44 countries, the company reaches customers in 79 countries, publishes 90 magazines, including 50 editions of Reader's Digest, the world's largest-circulation magazine, operates 83 branded websites and sells nearly 40 million books, music and video products across the world each year. www.rda.com.

SOURCE Allrecipes.com

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