TODAYshow.com takes consumers to Cooking School

New online and mobile destination for home cooks launches with innovative cross-media initiative

NEW YORK & REDMOND, Wash. - TODAYshow.com launched its new food and recipe site cookingschool.TODAYshow.com, a destination for viewers who want to find delicious recipes and video and cooking tips from celebrity chefs and food experts. TODAY’s Cooking School extends and enhances the wealth of lifestyle advice and ideas featured on TODAY’s popular digital properties. From decadent desserts to full-fledged feasts, TODAY’s Cooking School features a rich variety of culinary treats demonstrated by world-class celebrity chefs. Now viewers can go online to get more in-depth instructions on how each meal is prepared, collect and store their favorites and search for new ideas. The content is also available on mobile devices, so consumers can easily download the recipe on-the-go.

The new site features video from all of the TODAY’s Cooking School segments, TODAY’s Kitchen segments and exclusive web-only video featuring cooking tips and recommendations. Consumers will find an improved recipe finder, archived content, and on-air segments from TODAY. Unilever, the Cooking School’s advertising partner, will provide recipes and special video segments showing how its popular brands like Bertolli, Country Crock, Hellman’s, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and Ragu sauces can be used to prepare delicious meals. Consumers can also search by recipe or celebrity chef, or expand the new advanced search feature and locate recipes by cuisine, season or holiday.

This comprehensive cross-media initiative is available on all platforms, with a presence on air, online and on mobile devices. The innovative outreach plan features a standalone iPhone application (app) for TODAY dedicated to recipes. With the new recipe app consumers can easily download a recipe, generate a checklist of ingredients, and use that when they go grocery shopping.

“Today’s Cooking School combines three topics we know our audience loves – family, food and fun. So we’ve combined celebrity chefs, delicious recipes, and time saving tips to deliver a one-stop-shop that’s informative and entertaining,” said Catherine Captain, vice president of marketing at msnbc.com. “With the enhanced recipe finder and the ability to save recipes, home cooks can turn to our site everyday to save time, explore new menu ideas and find out what their favorite celebrity chefs are cooking up next.”

“We’re excited about leveraging a really compelling platform for telling our brands’ stories, which range from providing busy moms with easy-to-make recipes so they can ‘feed their kids well’, as in the case of Ragu, to showcasing Hellmann’s Real Food messaging, to creating a menu of restaurant quality meals with Bertolli,” said Phyllis Joseph, Senior Lead, Communications, Unilever. “The ‘Cooking with Bertolli’ segments are the perfect complement for TODAY’s Cooking School because we share the same spirit of creativity, living well, having fun and sharing great meals.”