Early in an issue’s lifecycle, influence is high and the cost of action is relatively low. As issues gain visibility and momentum, urgency increases, positions solidify, and the cost of response rises — while the ability to influence outcomes declines. To act earlier in the issue lifecycle, Public Affairs needs a new operating system.
Genie is the operating system for Public Affairs that connects issues ↔ stakeholders ↔ relationships ↔ engagement strategy in a single, continuously updated system. This enables Public Affairs to be more proactive and better informed, while eliminating fragmentation across information, tools and workflows — so cross-functional and geographically distributed teams can work more coordinated and aligned when managing the external environment.
This enables teams to: maintain a shared understanding of priority issues; identify who influences each issue as it evolves; coordinate engagement across teams and regions; and turn external complexity into clear, defensible decisions. This is the shift from late-response to strategic influence.
Why Public Affairs needs a new operating system
The problem: Public Affairs often operates in late-response mode
Public Affairs teams typically engage on issues only after positions have solidified and scrutiny has intensified — when the window to influence outcomes is narrow and the cost of acting is higher.
In practice, this shows up as: issues only become visible after pressure has consolidated; engagement begins after policy direction has already been set; external dynamics move faster than internal response cycles.
1. Issue & Policy Intelligence
Public Affairs teams operate in fast-moving regulatory and policy environments where timing determines influence. Effective teams maintain continuous awareness of regulatory developments, political signals and narrative shifts across their priority issues and regions.
With Genie, you can: monitor the most relevant signals related to issues through a context-aware system; identify spikes of negative sentiment across geographies; and ensure everyone is working from the same view of what actually matters — across functions and regions.
2. Stakeholder & Influence Intelligence
Know the real influencers and actors behind each issue. Influence in Public Affairs rarely follows org charts. Each issue has its own ecosystem of policymakers, advisors, industry associations, NGOs, experts and intermediaries shaping outcomes behind the scenes.
With Genie, you can: dynamically discover and prioritise stakeholders by issue; identify hidden influencers and intermediaries; automatically map the stakeholder ecosystem; and monitor sentiment for specific stakeholders.
3. Relationship & Engagement Intelligence
Go beyond stakeholder lists and move toward an engagement strategy. Public Affairs effectiveness depends not just on who you engage, but how, when, and in what sequence that engagement happens. High-performing teams treat stakeholder engagement as a strategic discipline.
With Genie, you can: uncover relationships, affiliations and influence pathways; generate engagement insights and recommendations grounded in context and the latest media signals; and build institutional memory by logging interactions and planning across teams.
Use Cases
Using Genie across different scenarios
Policy Briefing
Scenario 1 – Briefing leadership on an emerging regulatory risk
Context: A regulatory development is gaining external momentum and leadership needs to decide whether it represents a material risk and whether early action is needed.
Outcome: Produce a solid, executive-ready briefing in hours — not days.
Engagement Campaign
Scenario 2 – Launching an engagement campaign on a priority issue
Context: You need to activate coalitions and influence networks around an important vote.
Outcome: Turn a static engagement plan into a dynamic, data-driven approach.
Stakeholder Monitoring
Scenario 3 – Continuous stakeholder monitoring
Context: You need to report monthly on changes in stakeholder sentiment.
Outcome: Anticipate stakeholder moves and react before issues escalate.