How product placement will fund the future of movies.

A front-page article in the Wall Street Journal recently cited the on-screen brand choices of two movie stars—Steve Martin driving a Mercedes Benz S-Class sedan in Shopgirl and Matthew Broderick driving one in The Stepford Wives—as empirical evidence that this model of Mercedes “has practically become an icon for corporate chieftains, movie stars and diplomats.” Since it was not the movie stars themselves who drive Mercedes but their fictional characters, all the front-page mention demonstrates is how effective product placement can be in the movies.