“What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.”
– David Ogilvy

My take: I agree that it’s content that eventually makes consumers make a decision to buy. But I’m not sure it’s only content that makes people pay attention in the first place. Content marketing is a trendy thing right now (although it’s been around forever), and it is no doubt valuable and necessary. But it’s not everything. You still have to get people to consume that content. You still have to do enough to just get their attention. Content does it some of the time, but not all of the time.

You need form and content. You need emotional stimulus to make someone want to buy, and logical stimulus to make someone happy they bought.

Form and content serve different purposes, but they are both equally important.