Are dogs the center of your financial life? If your answer is “Yes”—or even “Huh?—you may want to check out Wag, which explores the intersection of content, affinity and financial services marketing.

With articles such as “Find the Best Veterinarian for Your Budget” and “Fidos and Fiduciaries,” Wag says it plans to become “a complete financial resource for…people who are fanatical about dogs” by providing financial expertise “by dog fanatics, for dog fanatics,” special deals and offers for dog lovers, a directory of “dog-friendly financial service providers” and Internet-based banking services for dog lovers.

In talking to a prospective client recently, she made a comment that I agreed with but also made me cringe. "Content is the new black," is what she said and, as a marketer, it made me cringe because of how trendy it makes content marketing sound. Truth is, the term "content" is all the rage right now, but I started asking myself, ‘what were we doing before?’  

Recently the Chicago Sun-Times' Neil Steinberg was turned down by the Wrigley Company when he asked to see how the gum was made.  

Steinberg's complaint struck the crux of the corporate communicator's plight:  

"At times, it seems that half of any big company is desperately grabbing for publicity while the other half, with equal fervor, frantically tries to keep itself under wraps."  

Every year around this time, I write a couple of short pieces previewing the annual conference of the Custom Content Council for Content, the group’s own custom publication.  The beauty of this assignment is two-fold: I learn about new developments from the forefront of content marketing, and I am privileged to interview interesting and influential people. This year was exceptional on both counts, highlighted by conversations with famed editor-in-chief Knight Kiplinger and Rob Tait, a former ad agency creative director who now pioneers the content strategy of “branded entertainment” in the Canadian market.   

Twenty-five years ago, a potential technology boon for communicators was simultaneously undermining the communication business.  

Oh, it was awful.  

Awful, and—after I completed a marathon session of vetting many dozens of corporate videos as program chairman of the Strategic Video Awards— suddenly familiar again.  

We’ve all heard that good content is supposed to be engaging. And now there are plenty of tools to measure engagement.

But that leaves a big gap: What kind of content is engaging, and how do we create content that engages our audience?  

Content marketers that focus on platforms and metrics can lose sight of these questions. And the answers you read about don’t tend to be very useful. Good content is supposed to be credible, authentic, relevant, compelling, “high-quality” (I’m guilty of using that last one), and so on. Most of these terms are just different plays on the word “useful.” But what is useful?  

China’s answer to Carrie Bradshaw is sexy, doe-eyed and smart enough to dig a guy who drives a Chevrolet Cruze.

“Miss Puff,” an animated online series about a tech-happy single woman in Beijing, is co-produced by Chevrolet-maker GM and the video website Youku. As of July the first episodes had attracted 20 million views, according to one media-watching China blog, ChinaSmack.

When he first heard the term “content marketing” not long ago, Kent State University public relations professor Bill Sledzik asked, “What kind of content are they marketing?”

That was before he joined me and 650 other people from disparate disciplines and far-flung locales at Content Marketing World 2011. This first-of-its kind gathering was staged in Cleveland, Ohio last week by Joe Pulizzi, the self-described “Godfather of content marketing,” the author of the book Get Content. Get Customers. and the publisher of Chief Content Officer magazine. Sledzik wasn’t the only one still trying to figure out what content marketing was all about, at the same time they were learning its techniques.

Partnering with an industry thought leader is a dynamite way to promote a brand, and it can be a real win-win for both sides. But the thought leader has a “brand” too, and each side has to maintain their integrity. If the thought leader comes off as a shill, then win-win can quickly become lose-lose (witness the commercials Willie Nelson did for Taco Bell).

When the partnership goes right, a thought leader can make a huge difference in a content marketing campaign—lending credibility, creating (or curating) content and influencing the campaign’s direction from behind the scenes.

There is so much talk about communication media these days, and so little talk about the message. When we mention it at all, we call it “content.” As in, “contents,” useful not so much to communicate but to fill a kind of communication container.

The container, these days, is the center of the conversation.