The institutional investors won't vote for you unless you add value to them. However, most of that value is communicated directly, via phone calls and visits by the sellside analyst to the portfolio manager/buyside analyst.

As you mentioned, there is an overwhelming volume of printed/PDFed research being produced by analysts and quite a lot of it finds its way into the hands of retail investors. Some is good & some is bad. Part of the success of being a good fund manager is figuring out which analysts make a difference and ensuring that you know when an impactful analyst makes a call immediately. Some analysts make lousy calls, but provide good insight into the industry that they cover. A good fund manager will use these analysts for their industry/country insight, but may not follow their calls. I would say generally that the top ranked analysts in Asiamoney and Institutional Investor provide good research.

The mechanical hit rate of analysts is part of the Bloomberg ANR function. Starmine StarMine also tracks both recommendation accuracy and earnings forecast accuracy via a mechanical formula. Starmine is partially used to compute bonuses at many large sellside firms because of an agreement with Spitzer to have a mechanical component to analysts' compensation.