In 2009, Microsoft turned to us to test advertising approaches for a new product. We recruited several different segments of consumers and held informal groups in the US and Europe, where we unraveled not just their reactions to the creative but also their reactions to the product itself: which aspects were most compelling to them, and why, and how could this best be communicated? We made critical recommendations around tone and age-appropriateness, using snapshots from respondents’ Facebook and Twitter pages to help illustrate the tone of the target’s communications in a real online environment.