The Super Bowl and plastics

The word “plastics” may not have been mentioned in Super Bowl 50 advertising, but it showed up in some of the most memorable ads.

MacNeil Automotive came the closest to the nitty gritty reality of plastics manufacturing with its ad featuring production at one of its molding plants. The company has advertised its WeatherTech brand the last three years at the Super Bowl and this year's ad focused on its workers and the importance of manufacturing jobs to the American family.

Bolingbrook, Ill.-based MacNeil has seen a very good reason to invest heavily in Super Bowl advertising. CEO David MacNeil told Crain's Chicago Business, a sister publication, that the company had a 46 percent year-over-year increase in visits to its website in 2015 after the ad and a 26 percent increase in phone inquiries. Sales grew by a double-digit percentage for two straight years.

(Our sister publication Advertising Age gave it two out of five stars, but also referred to the workplace as a “surprisingly cool-looking floormat plant.”)

But the growth of plastics — especially composites — in automotive meant that some plastics-intensive new vehicles coming on the market this year got their time in the Super spotlight.

Not that you'd know Honda's Acura NSX has plastics from the look of the spot, which instead focuses on molten metal for what the company calls the “only supercar designed, developed and manufactured in the U.S.”

The NSX, which will go into production at a new “Performance Manufacturing Center” in Marysville, Ohio, will have a carbon fiber floor as well as an optional CF roof and sport package featuring carbon fiber throughout.

It wasn't the only composite-heavy Honda Motor Co. vehicle featured during the Super Bowl. The 2017 Honda Ridgeline pickup truck, with a composite bed, focused on the ability to use the bed's plastic material as a speaker (check out Kerri Jansen's story from the auto show introduction here).

The Ridgeline ad took the talking — or singing — animal route, with sheep who had picked up some musical tips from Queen thanks to the bed.

You think it's easy getting sheep to “sing?” Honda points out that the special effects were “produced staying true to the anatomy and natural behavior of sheep. This included study of the movement of sheep's mouths to determine how their facial muscles might react while singing.” No word from Honda on the work it took to make the farmer's dog look like he was talking.

Classic rock also was part of a sentimental ad from Volkswagen AG's Audi brand featuring a retired astronaut, David Bowie's “Starman” and the R8 sports car.

Like the competition from Acura, the Audi R8 uses carbon fiber, with 13 percent of the multi-material frame coming from carbon fiber and more CF used in the B pillars, exterior skin, an aerodynamic rear wing and other components.

USA Today's Super Bowl ad meter ranked the ad at No. 8 for the night, right below Honda's Ridgeline ad. Not bad for a material that wasn't even mentioned.