Volvo gives away LifePaint — a spray that makes dark cyclists glow in headlights

Volvo's identity is safety — it invented the three-point seatbelt in 1959 and opened the patent. With the new XC90 launching and more than 19,000 cyclists injured on UK roads every year, Volvo Car UK wanted to take safety beyond its own cars: the best way to survive a crash is not to crash.

Give away a washable reflective spray so cyclists glow in car headlights — Volvo's safety claim turned into a product for non-drivers.

Grey London and Swedish startup Albedo100 made LifePaint: invisible by day, it reflects headlights back at drivers, washes off, and works on clothes, shoes, helmets, pushchairs, backpacks and dog leads. Volvo gave away 2,000 free cans at six London and Kent bike shops, backed by a film and flash-triggered posters.

The trial placed 2,000 cans in six shops with a promise to expand if demand followed; the idea won two Cannes Lions Grands Prix in 2015 (Design and Promo & Activations) — Grey London's first — and spread the 'best way to survive a crash is not to crash' line around the world.

Volvo's safety story had always been about its cars — the three-point seatbelt, invented in 1959 and deliberately left patent-free. LifePaint, launched in March 2015, turned that logic outward: a water-based reflective spray, invisible by daylight, that glows when a car's headlights hit it. Apply it to a coat, helmet, backpack or dog lead and a cyclist becomes visible at night.

The campaign was built on Volvo UK's line that the best way to survive a crash is not to crash. Grey London developed the concept with Swedish startup Albedo100; 2,000 cans were given away free at six cycle shops in London and Kent, and a film showed the spray's effect on cyclists riding through dark streets, alongside posters that revealed themselves under a camera flash.

The gesture carried the brand further than an ad could: the trial was designed to expand nationally if it proved popular, and the work won two Cannes Lions Grands Prix in 2015, in Design and Promo & Activations — Grey London's first Grand Prix. It became a reference for brand as public service.

The idea generalizes: find the brand's core promise, strip it down to a thing a stranger can use, and give it away where the problem lives — the gift is the message.

It externalized Volvo's core claim — safety — into something non-drivers can use.

Giving the product away free made the gesture credible rather than commercial.

The invisible-by-day, glow-at-night mechanic made the danger literally visible.

It did double duty as PR for the XC90 launch without showing the car.

Instead of advertising a value, give it away as a usable object: a product people can touch proves the brand better than any claim — and it becomes news on its own.

LifePaint stayed a phase-one trial, with expansion conditional on demand, framed by Volvo's Vision 2020 — no one killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo by 2020. A Halloween rollout encouraged kids to 'Be scary, be safe'. In 2017 the UK Advertising Standards Authority banned the TV ad for showing bicycle frames sprayed with LifePaint when the metal had actually been painted with a different Albedo100 product; Volvo accepted the ruling — a reminder that award-winning ideas still live or die on every claim being checkable.