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Since Instagram Stories was released in early August amid accusations of it being a Snapchat ripoff, users have quickly warmed to the new feature—and that includes brands. What are brands communicating via this new platform? Let’s take a look at some of the Stories posted in the past 24 hours to find out how this evanescent medium is being put to use, and see if we can glean some lessons about what makes them effective.

What the best PR does is amplify brand stories and messaging in ways that connect with the target audience, whether the brand defines that audience as pure consumer, professional or a hybrid. And think about what connection meant 40 years ago—if you weren’t connected via membership in a school club, a religious or professional organization, or at the very least to the households who shared your party phone line, then the extent of your connections would likely have been limited to family members, schoolmates and work colleagues.

Every brand has a story to tell, says Doug Busk of Coca-Cola. While the mechanism may not be the size and scope of Journey, Coca-Cola’s digital magazine, brand-building for any organization type is a matter of leveraging the awesome opportunity of digital storytelling.

Before the debate, some “experts” were advising Republican candidate Donald Trump to tone down his usual blustery public speaking style to sway undecided voters. Some urged Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to attack vociferously, shedding her calming image as a champion of the poor and the middle class and as an experienced governmental actor. Neither candidate listened to the so-called experts.

There’s no surefire way to win media coverage for your brand, but strategic timing can help you avoid wasting hours of research and writing pitches that are routinely ignored by journalists. It pays to resist the pressure from senior leaders or clients to send that pitch right now and instead be a part of the news cycle’s ebb and flow.

Snapchat is taking its first step out of the digital world and trying its luck in the hardware space, according to a blog post on the company’s website. Snapchat’s newest product, dubbed “Spectacles,” is a pair of sunglasses with a built-in camera that can shoot short videos and upload them directly to Snapchat.

With startups growing and, oh so often, failing fast, it is more important than ever that ingenuity and passions are partnered with PR prudence and a tight communications strategy. It all seems to boil down to two major thought pillars, under which all else falls: messaging and relationships. Understanding how to create a message and have the relationships that will make your message matter are the foundation to creating a successful communications strategy at a startup.

Life is live, but so much of what we watch on screens is taped. For brands wanting to control their messages, avoiding in-the-moment tools would seem to make sense. Still, for brands there’s much to be gained by using Snapchat. With many brands getting started on Snapchat, and plenty timidly staying away, we asked Sarah Maloy, director of social media and external video at Fuse Media LLC, parent of national television network Fuse TV, to tell us of Snapchat traps to avoid.

In our weekly feature about PR trends, C. Mondavi & Family VP Marketing Paul Englert tells us he’s seeing a blurring of the lines between PR, brand communications and social media. As we reach out to a younger audience, and as society continues to evolve the way it communicates, we need to evolve our communication strategies. Much of what we once shared via press release, direct email and phone now is sent via myriad social media platforms and text. Our consumer-facing print and web messages are evolving in acknowledgement of the immediacy and brevity with which people demand information from us.

A look at the top stories of the past week in PR. This week including the not-so-friendly visits to Capitol Hill by Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and Mylan’s Heather Bresch. Other stories include Facebook’s goof on how it measures time viewing videos, Finn Partners’s growth spurt and a new tech chief for APCO Worldwide.