I eventually figured it out - it was a notch in their belt that they wanted so that they could point to it as proof of worth. They sought out those various “pay us $2000 and we’ll put you on the cover of our magazine” nonsense things too, even getting them framed and putting them up on the wall, due to what turned out to be feelings of inferiority and a need to feel like they were making progress, even if it wasn’t the right kind of progress.
Needless to say, those didn’t help us at all and were a waste of time and money. Focusing on customers and PR that got in front of them worked much better.
And then I saw a tweet a while back, that I admittedly can no longer find, that if you were to filter for "Stanford" in that list, the ratio blows out to nearly 3:1 (ill-gotten gains:revenue).