• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 27, 2010

Amazingly, only half the room at OMMA Global New York indicated they knew what the term SNAFU meant, and where it came from. That's amazing, because most if not all of them are living through a period that Gord Hotchkiss, president & CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions likens to the World War II military culture that coined the term SNAFU.

Using the "family version" of the acronym, Hotchkiss, a regular contributor to MediaPost, and part of the opening presentation at OMMA Global New York, said it stands for "Situation Normal, All Fouled Up." The non family version involves substituted the F-word for another, but the meaning is essentially the same.

"Everything was screwed up, and you just had to accept that," Hotchkiss said of the original derivation of the term that GIs coined to explain how they get their heads together amid constant turmoil and change.

"If you got too uptight about it, you got paralyzed and could not function. That's kind of where we are. There are no blueprints. There are no plans," Hotchkiss noted.

Hotchkiss