No One in Meeting Knows What Acronym Means
According to sources at BigTime Marketing and Communications, confusion abounded at a recent internal meeting. Those present, who would not go on the record due to the sensitive nature of the situation, informed Premium Jargon that a mysterious acronym appeared on the agenda, was discussed, analyzed, and resulted in the assignment of action items, all despite the fact that no one in the meeting knew what the acronym stood for or meant.
The meeting, a “Crossfunctional Visibility Sync” meant to bring together Directors and Associates from different areas of the organization, was held on Thursday at 2:00 PM, which team members noted was too early on a Thursday to begin blaming “weekend brain” for a lack of cognition. As most meeting participants did not know each other very well, and as all were neither senior or junior enough to willingly put their credibility on the line by asking what the acronym meant, the meeting created the perfect storm of ignorance and fear of embarrassment necessary for everyone in the room to simply choose to fake it.
The acronym, NABBA, was added to the agenda Thursday at 11:00 AM. While some blamed their lack of understanding on the fact that the item was added to the agenda relatively late, a number of sources admitted they “Never look at the agenda until I’m sitting at the meeting anyway”.
“No idea what that was, but I know I have to follow up with my VP about it. That should be interesting”, noted one Associate of Strategy. “I did try to google it but all that came up was the National Amateur Body-Builders Association, which I was 90% sure was wrong.”
“Honestly, not a clue,” a Director of Social noted. “At first I thought it had to be an Ad Tech thing, but then that team started looking over at me, and I panicked and started talking. I pretended I got an urgent email so I could look at my phone and tried to find some answers online, but I could only find pictures of body builders and huge dogs. I put my phone down, cracked a joke about clients, and just kind of BS’ed about making sure we got real results. Then I said I’d put a deck together by the end of next week.”
The director sighed, “Man I hope they forget about that.”
“I’m just looking forward to seeing that deck, because I am WAY in the dark on this one”, said one of the more senior employees at the meeting. “I just got promoted and I gotta know stuff like this.”
That sentiment was reflected by one of the more junior members at the meeting. “Hopefully I can get that deck! I just got promoted!! All I do is read Digiday and Ad Week!!! I know all about tons of acronyms, SSP, DSP, DMP, Daas, Saas, KPI, you name it!!!! What am I gonna do if I can’t figure out NAABA!?!? WHAT AM I GONNA DO???????????”
Other meeting attendees noted that an intranet search, a look through the company’s “Acronym Glossary”, and whispering “NABBA” to themselves while near some of the more nerdy analytics people yielded no answers. Most echoed the idea that they are looking forward to seeing the deck.
When reached for a follow up comment, the Director of Social was concerned.
“Wait, really? People said that? Shoot. What do you think, body builders or dogs? Maybe I’ll just get a new job.”
At press time, there was still no one who knew what the acronym meant.
