Popcornmeter: Renaming the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score

Background & Challenge
Launched in 1998, Rotten Tomatoes is the world’s most recognized site for film and television reviews, recommendations, and opinions. Its famous Tomatometer score reflects the percentage of positive reviews from professional critics, while its prosaically named Audience Score reflected the enthusiasm of everyday viewers. Looking to reinforce and elevate the Rotten Tomatoes brand with a more proprietary name for Audience Score, parent company Fandango reached out to Catchword for a fresh take.

Naming the Brand
The new name had to easily connote reviews from everyday folk while pairing naturally with "Tomatometer." After exploring hundreds of ways to express everyday audience members (folk, real, people, crowd… ), accolades and scores (buzz, props, likes, clap…), and more than a few tomato references (vine, ripe, salsa…), Catchword recommended "Popcornmeter."

The name instantly communicates the idea of audience member over critic (subtly recalling “pop” as in “popular”) and aligned perfectly with RT’s existing iconography for the audience score: a bucket of popcorn. As a totally intuitive parallel to the well-known "Tomatometer," the rename required virtually no marketing, and most users have probably already forgotten there ever was an "Audience Score."

Outcome
Popcornmeter rolled out in August 2024 with broad media coverage and inspired a new Verified ratings system of Hot (3.5 stars or higher) and Stale.