There are some people who have climbed to relative positions of power not by producing value but by playing the business social metagame.

It's not about having the best quality product, there are two ways to reach those people. They need to either see you as a means to an end for them (caveat: they only deal in shallow self-promotional narratives, not nuance or detail), or they need to see you as one of them.

If the competition weren't happily(?) playing the game it wouldn't be necessary, but given that they do and that I have an obligation to shareholders I have to play along.