"CoolBrands" - a worthless exercise?

A company called The Centre for Brand Analysis have published a list of the top 20 coolest brands.

It has gained extensive coverage as far-reaching as The Drum and the Telegraph, while Marketing Week also got in on the action. I have commented extensively on the Marketing Week website so won't repeat myself, but suffice to say that it comes across as a very flaky piece of research. There's precious little available on their methodology, but what there is doesn't inspire confidence. How can you quantify "coolness" into a list format anyway?

The Marketing Week article is here.

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Update, September 2011: a year on, and the exercise has been repeated. It's still fluff, but it got Aston Martin trending on Twitter, so it's fulfilled all its objectives, I suppose.