Can't content marketing also be visceral, rather than merely informative?

Look, a book on fashion. How quaint!

Can't content marketing can't be useful for brands that, by convention, rely heavily on photos and video? Say, for luxury cars? Is content marketing, with a toolbox full of white papers, podcasts, and professional reviews, etc, too dependent on rational decision-making? Can content marketing be adapted to make baser, more emotive appeals to buyers' desires?

Content marketing needs a better name

via Behance

“Content marketing” is not exactly the most intuitive term in the marketing industry today.

It doesn't help that some agencies think there’s nothing wrong with slapping the label “content marketing” over everything they already do as an ad outfit.

It also doesn't help that consultants, who mean to clarify things, explain themselves in such prosaic, self-serving truisms:

• "Content marketing is about engaging the audience" (And traditional advertising aims to bore the tears out of us all?)
• "Content marketing is all about quality content" (Whereas traditional marketing is a load of crap?)
• "Content  marketing is about the content" (Is there any such a thing as marketing without content?)

What is content marketing, exactly?

Here's my attempt at an explanation.

That population white paper, and 6 common content marketing mistakes

I don't usually write about politics because it distracts from the purpose of this blog. This blog is about content, not so much about public affairs. But the ongoing contention over the Singapore Government’s latest White Paper has important lessons about the place of content and publishing in public relations.

I want to take this opportunity to explain the concept of content marketing to the public relations people that make up the majority of my meatspace professional network. It may not be the biggest example of content-strategy-gone-south from Singapore, but it is the most mainstream in recent memory.