VIDEO: What Happens When You Ask People in the Regular Economy to Work for Free?

Toronto ad agency Zulu Alpha Kilo asked restaurateurs, personal trainers and architects to provide some of their product or service for free so shoppers could decide whether to buy it. “Get out of here” was one cook’s response.

The practice of doing some work “on spec” is common in what are called the creative fields, of which advertising is a part.

The clip confirms what most people seem to know: that business is always a negotiation between parties of unequal power, that the outcome is rarely a fair deal, and that our word for this is “exploitation.”

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.