most influential

A new visual announcement has been piped in to the lounge at my corporate day job, proudly announcing that our CEO was recently crowned "#1 most influential" by some self-proclaimed arbiter of the game. Besides immediately striking me as a dick-waving power move, I wondered why they chose to emphasize influence as a characteristic worthy of bragging about over, say, competence, or excellence, or agility.

What is the intended purpose of lodging this public relations media item in my consciousness? Am I supposed to feel proud, happy, or motivated to complete my worker bee tasks with more gusto now that I know our guy is number one in a competition in which I'm not a participant according to some obscure committee I've never met and whose opinion I don't much care for?

"Listen to this guy - everybody else is doing it!"

Propaganda is broadly defined as any media produced and disseminated with intent to manipulate aggregate thought and behavior in a particular direction. We know it works because we've been using it successfully for decades to get people to vote for parties whose interests don't coincide and buy things they don't need. That's all easy peanuts by now.

I'd be interested to study how much of a positive effect such campaigns have on self-reported employee satisfaction. As someone who ends up in the tail end of most distributions, I can't extrapolate from my own experience, but I have to assume the marketing team is doing their homework, even when they're selling dog food.