We all know that content is king in marketing in these days. If you don't have great content, it really doesn't matter what cool channels you're using. But how do companies think about creating truly compelling content, especially if you're steeped in the world of traditional pitches, white papers, and promotions?

Scott Anderson, Vice President of Customer Communications for HP's Technology Solutions Group (which serves business customers) provided a great answer during a BtoB webinar today on how business technology buyers use media in the buying process.

According to Anderson, HP has made three major investments in content creation in the last two years:

• Build a new editorial team staffed especially by technology journalists, rather than marcom people. As he noted, journalists typically have both a more skeptical eye and better story telling skills 
• Organize a platform to enable HP's subject matter experts (engineers, consultants, etc.) to bring their own voices directly into the market (rather than being "translated" by the marcom staff) with blogs, forums, and other conversational contributions
• Create more opportunities for HP customers to share their own stories and ideas at events and online.

Has HP fully swept out the old and embraced the new? Of course not. You can easily find all manner of traditional features and functions promotional content from HP -- and not all of it is useless. According to buyer research presented by tech publisher CMP during today's webinar, many buyers do actually want to see the technical details, so long as it comes during the right phase in the buying process.

Most important, though, HP has taken three important steps forward in creating a more content-rich, content-driven, and conversational approach to the marketplace: Tell better stories, share expertise and knowledge in authentic ways, and help your customers talk to each other about the issues you care about most. Not a bad model.

The battle for power between content creators and content distributors has roiled huge swaths of the media, entertainment, telecommunications, and technology industries since the digital age began in earnest in the early 1990s.  Marketing and creative types typically claim that content always has and always will rule; the more techie-oriented among us generally give the nod to those who control distribution.

The rise of social media, where innovative software platforms almost overnight become their own media companies with users doing the content heavy lifting (e.g., Facebook, YouTube, Digg, etc.), ups the ante dramatically. In this context, BusinessWeek media columnist Jon Fine wonders if the debate is closed: "Millions of people tell stories now--on blogs, on MySpace, on Flickr--for free. There is a surfeit of storytelling. Millions of people do not sit around writing software for free. Advantage: programmers."

Reporting on the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Fine highlights the impressive innovation and equally impressive self-confidence among the tech-minded denizens of social media, but does leave himself some wriggle room in suggesting that the end of the commercial storytellers might not be quite upon us (of course, one would expect nothing less from someone making his living selling content).

From a B2B perspective, though, I wonder if the storyteller's fate is nearly so dire. It's one thing to write off large chunks of  consumer news media and entertainment in the face of freely published commentary and conversation. For business people, however, there is far less tolerance for amateur hour. Business people are as interested as anyone in the ideas, experiences, and insights of their peers; that's why well-organized live events and online business networks and communities are flourishing alongside their more trendy consumerist peers. But so too are professional custom publishing and thought leadership marketing, often tied directly to those events and communities.

The reality is that great content drives great conversation, and busy business folk have little time to prospect for the useful nuggets buried in the largely useless piles on most broad-based sites. Yes, there are great tools for search and filtering, but it's still a whole lot easier to rely on -- and pay for -- the professional version. More sophisticated platforms and distribution channels will always be useful, but, at least in the B2B world, they still mean little without powerful content (i.e., business stories) at the core. Count me as a strong optimist for the future of the storytellers. What about you?

Is nuclear power good for the environment? Now there's a conversation starter! And, indeed, it served quite well to power the conversation a few nights ago during the eighth annual 360 Summit at the New York Stock Exchange. Organized and sponsored by WF360 and NYSE Euronext, the summit brought together about 150 business executives for an evening of networking and conversation, topped off with the presentation of the 360 Leadership Award 2007 to Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of AREVA, the world's leading nuclear power company.

The award was an interesting one, especially given the evening's opening comments by WF360 CEO Susan Willett Bird on the importance of business leaders and companies focusing on the environmental bottom line. Lauvergeon made a strong pitch in her prepared remarks (delivered at the dinner by an AREVA deputy) about the value of CO2-free nuclear energy in a world driven to curtail global warming. But the audience included a number of skeptics, and certainly the nuclear power advocates within the environmental movement comprise only a small (although perhaps growing) minority.

The conversations sparked by the award illustrated perfectly the objective of the event: bring together a group of smart and interesting people, ply them with enough food and drink to loosen their lips, and prod them to talk about serious issues. Discussions at my table, which included leaders in finance, manufacturing, consulting, marketing, and international diplomacy, ranged from the state of public education to conflicts between Islam and the West to the globalization of capital investment (with just a few digressions into the second game of the World Series, the score of which a few of us were periodically checking on our Blackberries under the table).

Sparking high-powered conversation is what WF360 is all about, and the long list of corporate supporters for the event (including Bombay Sapphire, CA, Conde Naste Portfolio, Dior, HarperCollins, Harvard Business School, TBWA, and more) reflects the growing corporate understanding that the best marketing these days follows that same approach.

The key, as Bird also noted in her opening comments, is to focus on "conversations that matter." In case we were all tongue-tied at the Summit, she scattered a batch of conversation starter cards around the dinner tables, with quotes like these:

 "If your company is doing business in a developing country, what responsibilities does it have to support and promote basic human rights?"

"Why are inequitable salaries, a lack of female and minority representation on boards and within executive leadership, and class action suits related to sexual harassment or discriminatory practices all still realities?"

"Other than an innate competitive drive, and of course the desire to make the company profitable, what values are most important for the corporate leader of today? What principals should that individual hold dear?" 

Now those are some of the conversations I'd like to see more businesses sponsoring in the marketplace.