Scam / Virus Email?

I did end up trading messages with the person. In the end, though it's legit in its way, it was a really misguided project from Adobe's marketing team. It was all about trying to market Adobe Express. I tried it out at the time (about a year ago) to see what I thought, and I was pretty unimpressed by the product. Adobe of all companies should be able to make a product like this that's actually made for designers who care about typography, etc., not just a (poor) copycat of other apps. Adobe has tried a few times to make a competitive app (Spark Post, anyone?), and it has yet to do a good job of it in my opinion — and I've been a hardcore Adobe user for over 30 years.

The proposal from his end was that he would create a blog post about what Adobe Express could do for people that I would put up in exchange for a year's subscription for me. There were a number of problems with it:

• He had obviously written it with ChatGPT or something similar, so it sounded generic and lifeless
• He sent some random Adobe Stock image to accompany the post that again was just generic
• The blog post didn't offer readers anything specifically useful, not even a free trial of their own with a special code, etc.

In the end I told him all of the above, and that I couldn't move forward with it. So yeah, basically legit, but they're obviously not doing the hard work of being professional or even really helpful about it. It's all pretty lazy, and it wasted a bunch of my time and energy.

Hope that's helpful!

I received a similar email from a, supposedly an outreach coordinator from Adobe Express. However, Google shows no such person with that name working for Adobe. Like the OP, I am curious about the veracity of the email. There don't appear to be suspicious links in the email, but the inability to verify the sender, plus the fact that his email address looks spammy, plus the kind of spammy feel of the content of the email itself makes me wonder.

This is what I received:

Hello!

My name is Leo and I’d love to reach your audience with custom content from our team at Adobe.

We've got a piece prepared for you that explains the benefits of relying on a professional photographer - everything from professional equipment, style knowledge to editing know-how.

Are you open to external contributors to your blog? If so, I’ll send it over for your consideration and feedback.

As a thank you for your hospitality I can send you a complimentary year-long license to all of our premium tools and templates once the article is published!

Thank you!
Leo