Renaming 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 (till now) prosaically named Audience Score reflects 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 would need 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, peanut gallery, average Joe, peer, crowd, pop, hive… ), accolades and scores (buzz, props, poll, meter, likes, index, say, clap…), and more than a few food and tomato references (vine, crushin’ it, ripe, kernel, salsa…), Catchword recommended Popcornmeter. The name instantly communicates the idea of audience member over critic and aligns perfectly with RT’s existing iconography. As a totally intuitive parallel to the well-known Tomatometer, the rename requires virtually no marketing, and most users will probably forget there ever was an Audience Score.