Is Keyword rich content marketing still an effective strategy for SEO?

We hired a marketing firm who supposedly specializes in SEO. They recommend keyword rich content pieces. We paid $1500 for 10 of these keyword rich posts that read like absolute garbage but he said it’s normal and regardless of how it reads it will boost us. I’ve worked in marketing for about 10 years now but I’m not an seo specialist. I was under the impression keyword rich content died out years ago when google hummingbird came along. Is this crappy content still an effective was to boost us on google?