Hi, it’s Jamie, Senior Intern at the CDP Institute Department of the Obvious. I’m fine and the gruel supply is stable. Coronavirus does seem to have reduced the flow of obvious research, but I’ve hoarded some to share. We’ll start with a Sprout Social study that found 89% of consumers will buy products from a brand they follow on social media. Almost as obvious: consumers want engagement, transparency, and service more than anything else, while marketers overestimate consumers’ interest in memorable content, storytelling, and pop culture references.

Privacy requirements keep expanding. BigID, whose core business is helping companies find where they’re storing personal data, is taking the next logical step with a portal to help manage that data. Capabilities include self-service management of consumer data requests and preferences, data rights management, user experience templates, and authentication of data requestor identities.

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.