Socko!: an acronym about punching home your primary message point in crisis communication

You need a five-letter acronym to impress a Ph.D. (like me) or an M.D. One I recently saw is pronounced SOCKO!  It comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That acronym appears in the 2018 CDC Field Epidemiology Manual by Sonja J. Rasmussen and Richard A. Goodman. Chapter 12, by Abbigail J. Tumpey, David Daigle, and Glen Nowack is titled Communicating During an Outbreak or Public Health Investigation. It says:

  

“For most news reports, you will have only one direct quotation; therefore, make it count. Write down your primary message point, often called the Single Overriding Health Communication Objective, or SOHCO (pronounced sock-O). You want your audience to remember this one key point because it is the most important message about the topic. A communications expert can help you refine the SOHCO and make sure it resonates. Say the SOHCO at the beginning of the interview. At the end of the interview, the reporter most likely will ask you if you have anything else that you have not covered. Take that opportunity to repeat the SOHCO; say, for example, ‘Thank you for your interest in this topic. The most important thing for your audience to remember is [repeat the SOHCO]’.”

I found out about that book from a long magazine article in May 4, 2020 issue of The New Yorker by Charles Duhigg titled Seattle’s leaders let scientists take the lead. New York’s did not. The twelfth paragraph of his article explains:

“…The C.D.C.’s Field Epidemiology Manual, which devotes an entire chapter to communication during a health emergency, indicates that there should be a lead spokesperson whom the public gets to know—familiarity breeds trust. The spokesperson should have a ‘Single Overriding Health Communication Objective, or SOHCO (pronounced sock-O),’ which should be repeated at the beginning and the end of any communication with the public. After the opening SOHCO, the spokesperson should ‘acknowledge concerns and express understanding of how those affected by the illnesses or injuries are probably feeling.’ Such a gesture of empathy establishes common ground with scared and dubious citizens—who, because of their mistrust, can be at the highest risk for transmission. The spokesperson should make special efforts to explain both what is known and what is unknown. Transparency is essential, the field manual says, and officials must ‘not over-reassure or overpromise.’

The lead spokesperson should be a scientist. Dr. Richard Besser, a former acting C.D.C. director and an E.I.S. alumnus, explained to me, ‘If you have a politician on the stage, there’s a very real risk that half the nation is going to do the opposite of what they say.’ During the H1N1 outbreak of 2009—which caused some twelve thousand American deaths, infections in every state, and seven hundred school closings—Besser and his successor at the C.D.C., Dr. Tom Frieden, gave more than a hundred press briefings. President Barack Obama spoke publicly about the outbreak only a few times, and generally limited himself to telling people to heed scientific experts and promising not to let politics distort the government’s response. ‘The Bush Administration did a good job of creating the infrastructure so that we can respond,’ Obama said at the start of the pandemic, and then echoed the SOHCO by urging families, ‘Wash your hands when you shake hands. Cover your mouth when you cough. I know it sounds trivial, but it makes a huge difference.’ At no time did Obama recommend particular medical treatments, nor did he forecast specifics about when the pandemic would end.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has another acronym with the same pronunciation but only four letters - a SOCO is a Single Overarching Communication Outcome. It appears in Setting Communication Objectives: SOCO Module D1.

There is an article in the December 2017 issue of Toastmaster magazine by Joel Schwartzberg titled Get to the Point. He also says that for a stronger impact a statement should have just a single point.    

An 1883 Currier and Ives image of The Champion Slugger came from the Library of Congress.