"The story idea was not really about people as much as about the things they left behind," he says. Similarly, there was the notion of anthropomorphizing the company software. "One [story] idea is that two companies are merging, but the software doesn't care," explains Menuez of Conelley's idea. "It's a dry, British sense of humor. Menuez, Connelly and Nee looked for a journalistic way to get to the root of the story. (Menuez was originally a photojournalist for The Washington Post, Time, LIFE, Newsweek, and Fortune.) "A lonely, beaten up bag going into the X-ray machine at an airport," he muses. "It makes for a more intellectual stretch."

Each shoot created a scenario, which Menuez treated like a short film. One ad was to portray a late-night brain storming session by showing a table strewn with the nights garbage. The team hired actors to act out the all-nighter, before packing up to leave near dawn. "I'm just pulling moments out of that, like a documentary," says Menuez. Microsoft ended up selecting an image of a man picking his coat up, ready to leave. Menuez used a Nikon, with natural and hot lights, "just like a film set," and was assisted by Jarred Mechaber, Peter Winterstellar and Joe Poey.