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How Schneider Electric Used Life is On to Redefine Home Energy
Schneider Electric's Life is On campaign, created by BETC and BETC Digital and launched in France in September 2014, is a digital campaign that repositioned the brand from an industrial energy-management supplier to a consumer-facing amplifier of everyday home life, anchored by the viral digital film known as Raccoon Dance Party.
The campaign launched on September 9, 2014, as reported by The Drum, and represented Schneider Electric's formal entry into B2C communication after decades of B2B positioning. Rather than leading with technical specifications or industrial credentials, the Life is On platform framed home-energy products through an emotional lens: that reliable, intelligent energy management enables people to live more fully. The raccoon film gave this idea a deliberately playful expression, designed to resonate with general consumer audiences who had little prior relationship with the Schneider Electric brand.
In France, where the campaign originated, Schneider Electric occupies a unique position as a heritage industrial company seeking broader cultural relevance among residential consumers. The SE@Home expression of the brand — the consumer-facing subset of Schneider Electric's offer — was the specific business area the campaign was built to serve, according to shots magazine. The website redesign that accompanied the film was planned for rollout across multiple countries, extending the campaign's reach well beyond the French domestic market while anchoring the creative identity in France. With a single media asset at its core, the campaign demonstrated that focused creative ambition, executed through digital channels, could carry a brand repositioning of significant strategic weight. Clapboard scores this campaign 76 out of 100, reflecting strong strategic clarity and creative distinctiveness against the challenge of consumer-brand unfamiliarity.
Schneider Electric appointed BETC and BETC Digital following a competitive agency review, specifically to lead its move into the B2C market, as reported by The Drum. That appointment established the strategic stakes immediately: this was not an incremental creative refresh but a foundational repositioning that required a new language for a brand historically invisible to residential consumers.
The strategic insight driving Life is On centred on reframing what an energy management company actually does for people. Where competitors in the home-energy and smart-home electronics category — including Legrand and ABB, both of which compete directly with Schneider Electric in residential electrical infrastructure — tend to lead with product functionality and technical differentiation, BETC identified an opportunity to operate at the level of lived experience. Chief strategic officer Marianne Hurstel and head of engagement planning Sebastien Houdousse contributed to the strategic architecture that positioned Schneider Electric as an enabler of life rather than a provider of electrical components, per production credits documented across The Drum and shots.
The market context in France in 2014 made this pivot both timely and necessary. Schneider Electric reported total FY2014 revenue of €24.939 billion, with Western Europe accounting for twenty-eight percent of geographic revenue, according to Schneider Electric's own annual reporting via Se. Within that European footprint, the residential and home-energy segment represented a growth priority. By launching the Life is On platform through digital channels, BETC aligned the campaign with the medium where French consumers were increasingly forming brand perceptions, allowing Schneider Electric to bypass the awareness deficit of traditional retail electronics categories and reach audiences directly through film and an redesigned digital experience.
Raccoon Dance Party is the digital film at the centre of the Life is On campaign, conceived and produced by BETC for Schneider Electric in France in 2014. The film deployed VFX-driven animation and a deliberately absurdist comic register to illustrate the idea that Schneider Electric's home-energy products free up time and energy for the moments that make life worth living — in this case, an improbably enthusiastic raccoon gathering.
The creative team responsible for the film brought together a range of senior BETC talent. Creative directors Ivan Beczkowski and Stéphane Xiberras led the creative vision, with art direction handled by Francis De Ligt and copywriting by Nathalie Dupont, as documented in production credits published by shots and The Drum. Business director Genevieve Rauner and account director Danièle Manasseh oversaw the client relationship, while strategic planner Kevin Hutchings contributed to the campaign's planning architecture alongside chief strategic officer Marianne Hurstel and head of engagement planning Sebastien Houdousse.
The use of VFX in a digital campaign for an electronics and energy-management brand was a deliberate tonal choice. Rather than deploying the visual language of industrial capability or smart-home aspiration that characterises much electronics advertising, BETC opted for warmth, humour, and visual invention. The raccoons function not as product demonstrators but as emotional proxies — creatures whose uninhibited joy communicates the campaign's core proposition more efficiently than any product feature could. This approach aligned with BETC's wider creative philosophy of building brand meaning through cultural resonance rather than functional messaging. The accompanying website redesign, rolled out across multiple markets following the France launch, extended the same visual and tonal identity into an interactive digital experience, ensuring that the film's creative register informed every consumer touchpoint in the Life is On ecosystem.
No verified performance data for the Life is On campaign by Schneider Electric is publicly available in terms of view counts, conversion metrics, or independently audited campaign results. The campaign did not carry publicly documented award recognition in the available research record for this analysis.
What the structural evidence does confirm is that the campaign succeeded in its primary strategic function. As reported by The Drum and shots, the Life is On platform was adopted as Schneider Electric's enduring global brand identity, persisting well beyond the 2014 launch and becoming the company's long-term consumer-facing positioning. That longevity is itself a meaningful indicator of effectiveness: brand platforms that fail commercially or creatively are typically retired within one to two years.
Schneider Electric's FY2014 annual figures, as reported via se.com, show total revenue of €24.939 billion with organic growth of positive one point four percent, indicating stable underlying business performance during the year of the campaign's launch. The company employed approximately one hundred and seventy thousand people and operated in more than one hundred countries at the time of launch, according to Schneider Electric's own reporting. While no causal link between these figures and the Life is On campaign can be drawn, the scale of the business underlines the strategic ambition of using a single digital film to begin shifting perception among a global consumer audience. Clapboard assigns this campaign a score of 76 out of 100, recognising the strength of its strategic positioning and creative distinctiveness while acknowledging the absence of publicly verifiable performance data to confirm downstream commercial impact.
Life is On is Schneider Electric's brand platform, launched in France in September 2014 by BETC and BETC Digital. It repositioned Schneider Electric from an industrial energy-management supplier to a consumer-facing brand, using the digital film Raccoon Dance Party to communicate that reliable home energy enables people to live more fully.
BETC and BETC Digital created the Life is On campaign for Schneider Electric in France. Creative directors Ivan Beczkowski and Stéphane Xiberras led the work, with art direction by Francis De Ligt and copywriting by Nathalie Dupont, as documented in production credits published by shots and The Drum.
Raccoon Dance Party is the VFX-driven digital film at the centre of the Life is On campaign, launched on September 9, 2014, as reported by The Drum. It used animated raccoons and absurdist humour to convey that Schneider Electric's home-energy products free people to enjoy life's most uninhibited moments.
Schneider Electric launched Life is On to establish a consumer-facing identity for its SE@Home home-energy offer, a market where it had limited brand recognition among residential audiences. BETC was appointed after a competitive review specifically to lead this B2C repositioning, according to reporting by The Drum.
Clapboard scores the Schneider Electric Life is On campaign 76 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong strategic clarity and creative distinctiveness in repositioning an industrial brand for consumer audiences, balanced against the absence of publicly available performance data to confirm commercial impact.
Life is On distinguished itself from competitors such as Legrand and ABB by abandoning functional product messaging in favour of emotional storytelling through VFX and humour. Where most electronics and home-energy campaigns in France led with technical features, BETC positioned Schneider Electric as an amplifier of lived experience rather than an equipment provider.
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