The National Geographic Channel is a network that boasts a serious quality image with elite audiences, but also with people with proven curiosity. The option of using table sets has thus made it possible to reach this broad audience, the targeting of which is made more complicated by its eclectic nature.

Additionally, we have surprised this audience at a time of day when they least expected it: the lunch break. The option taken by the agency and the advertiser has been to prick the public with this serious topic by addressing it in the crudest way possible. Given that the programme reveals the real living conditions of inmates, it was essential to reproduce a facet of this reality to assure maximum involvement from the target audience. A larger-than-life panel of prisoners was selected and filmed to be distributed in as many venues as possible that are symbolic of the general public’s comfortable day-to-day life.

Despite the reluctance of certain restaurateurs when launching the operation, 30,000 table sets were distributed to around a hundred collective catering outlets in the Paris region. They resulted in the advertiser securing around forty articles in the daily press and magazines (Metro, 20 minutes, le Parisien, Le Figaro, Télé 7 Jours…).The programme has helped its Wednesday evening broadcast slot to secure a 10% increase in awareness, and produced a significant improvement in programme-to-channel attribution during the latest quantitative tests.