> If you're going to hire a wedding photographer, all things being equal, if one says they did the photos for a show that you are familiar with, or appeared in magazines you're familiar with - that is worth a great deal in marketing value.

Not really.

No one knows wedding photographers by name. The absolutely most famous wedding photographer in the world is .... who?

If you’ve gotten a customer far enough in your funnel that you’re able to boast about the Netflix show, the bulk of the marketing is done already. That might seal the deal sure, but regardless they’re gonna want to see examples of your work.

Finally, wedding photographers aren’t vanity purchases in the sense that there’s no designer label to show off. All there is are photographs. And if the photographs are great, no one cares who took them.

Also I wonder if such exposure will have negative effect overall. That is getting timewasters that are not actually interested in your product, but your experience at show.

A appearance on show might make you competitive against someone at similar price when doing head-to-head comparison, but someone who is cheaper cause not offering free opportunities might beat you. I really doubt there is very great up-side.

>The "pay" comes in the exposure and authority the photographer will build after doing this.

This is the line every questionable business uses when trying to get freelancers to work for free. It's well-known and despised.

If it's well-known, then why do people agree to it?

When you're new to freelancing, you generally have a lot of free time and it's better to take any job, even unpaid, than do nothing at all. It's more out of desperation than someone actually believing unpaid work is fair.

Edit: For a little perspective. Whatever job you do, please come to me and do it for free, I'll post a good review for you online.

The Oatmeal gives a good response to this. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/exposure

As others have said, your argument is popular with business owners trying to avoid paying money to workers, but in reality it largely just excludes anyone who is not from a privileged background.

I’m actually coming at this from a marketing based background. It’s just obvious to me how a photographer could take huge advantage of this, but of course they would need to know how to promote correctly.

Your "smart" photographer will find themselves hungry and behind on rent while they're busy pretending that they're definitely gonna strike it big once they've got all this exposure. You can't cash in on it, it's not guaranteed to do anything for you, but money will always pay for food.