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BBC iPlayer: how cool is that?

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Lucy Sinclair | 12:17 UK time, Tuesday, 29 September 2009

We're feeling pretty chuffed that BBC iPlayer has been picked as one of the 20 coolest brands in Britain. We didn't and can't apply or pay to be listed as a cool brand - Cool Brands is an annual barometer of the nation's coolest stuff compiled by an expert panel and more than 2500 members of the British public via a YouGov survey.

Obviously cool is a tricky thing to try and quantify and is essentially subjective, but companies who do that kind of thing have researched it and reckon that there are six factors inherent in 'coolness' : style, innovation, originality, authenticity, desirability and uniqueness.

So I guess what we're most pleased about is that all of those are qualities we're always aiming for, in order to make BBC iPlayer even better for you - its users. We hope you agree with the panel and public who voted us 'cool' that we're heading in the right direction.

In a similar vein, we were also amused and pleased last month to see that the learned folk at Collins English Dictionary have now included 'iPlayer' as one of 267 new words in their new 30th anniversary edition.

In choosing the new words, Collins say that they picked them to show how and how fast society is changing, so it feels good - and right - that the BBC, with (or despite) its long heritage, is still making its mark on the future.

All in all its been quite a journey since we launched less than two years ago. Incidentally, you might be interested to know that we're now talking to the other public service broadcasters about whether the 'cool' iPlayer brand, our technology and you our users, who, combined, are what have made BBC iPlayer such a success, could help them in their longer-term video-on-demand ambitions. You can read what Erik Huggers said about it at the IBC conference.

Lucy Sinclair is Head of Marketing, BBC iPlayer & BBC Online.

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