The founders of the Hallow prayer app say their advertising relationship with controversial actor Russell Brand is meant to invite non-Catholics to an experience of prayer — and that if the actor is charged with sexual assault, the company will reevaluate its advertisements on his podcast.
Brand, 49, is a British actor, podcast host, and media personality who has been accused of rape, sexual assault, and physical and emotional abuse, for alleged acts said to have taken place between 2006 and 2013. Brand denies the allegations, arguing that any sexual encounters involving the alleged victims were consensual.
In recent months, Brand has begun speaking publicly about adopting Christian spirituality. In April, the actor was baptized in Britain’s River Thames by British survival television star Bear Grylls, and has since posted on Instagram photos of himself performing a baptism in an unspecified river.
British prosecutors said this month they are considering filing sexual assault charges against Brand, in response to a request from detectives in London’s Metropolitan Police Service.
Amid the criticism Brand is facing over his alleged sexual misconduct, he has also become in recent months associated with the Hallow app, after the organization posted in April a video message from Brand advertising the app, with Brand celebrating Hallow personality Fr. Mike Schmitz as a “good geezer,” and promoting a Hallow reading of the spiritual classic “He Leadeth Me.”
Hallow also advertises on Brand’s podcast, hosted on the Rumble streaming platform, which is popular among conservatives as an alternative to YouTube, where Brand’s own content was demonetized last year after the sexual assault allegations became prominently.
Brand has more than 2 million followers on the Rumble platform, and has reportedly earned more than $1.5 million from his Rumble podcast, launched last year. Brand’s podcast is also carried on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.
The actor’s advertising relationship with Hallow has prompted pushback from Catholics following the case.
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For his part, Hallow co-founder Alex Jones told The Pillar that Brand became an “advertising partner” earlier this year, after the actor began posting on social media about his positive experience with the prayer app — organically at first, according to Hallow, and then later as part of an advertising relationship.
Jones told The Pillar that “the primary goal of partnering with Russell is to reach out to his audience and invite them into a relationship with the Lord.”
Noting that Brand’s podcast, “Stay Free,” is reportedly popular among young men and people looking for “spirituality,” Jones said that “for us to be able to reach out to those folks and invite them into Catholic spirituality and … diving deeper into what the Church teaches… gets us really excited.”
Jones added that Brand’s affiliation with Hallow is only for the purposes of advertising — that the actor is not a content creator on the app, and will not be.
He added that Hallow’s advertising relationship with Brand is part of a larger contract with the Rumble platform, which includes advertisements with other content creators featured on the platform. That advertising arrangement includes advertisements on Brand’s podcast, and has also included sponsored social media posts from Hallow featuring Brand — though Jones said the app is no longer commissioning or posting social media content with Brand.
“We don’t run ads on our [social media] platform from him,” Jones told The Pillar.
Nevertheless, Jones said his company has continued to advertise on Brand’s podcast because “our goal here is reaching out to his audience” to invite them to use the Hallow app.
The Pillar’s review of Brand’s podcast found that advertisers ran a gamut of industries, with commercials from the Westwood One sports radio network; from Grand Canyon University, a private, for-profit Christian college; from a coffee company opposing the “woke political agenda;” from an online pharmacy; and from a company promoting investments in gold, with Donald Trump, Jr. and former Congressman Ron Paul as pitchmen.
Jones said Hallow’s overall marketing strategy is centered around taking “big swings” — Super Bowl commercials and celebrity partnerships — to “reach out to people who have fallen away, who aren’t in the places where most Christians and Catholics go.”
“If Hallow’s not around tomorrow, we're all going to be just fine. I use it every day and I’m going to be fine. I can still do my rosary, my daily Gospel, I can read some scripture reflections. I’ll be just fine. But what we do have is this unique opportunity to reach out to people in a way that other organizations can’t,” Jones said.
The Hallow co-founder said he was aware that prosecutors are considering filing sexual assault charges against Brand, and said that if charges are filed, “we would obviously take it very seriously. It would be a really important development” — though he did not say whether criminal charges would see Hallow pull its ads from Brand’s podcast, adding that, “I could see a bunch of different ways that that goes.”
In response to questions on that front, Jones said he could not “discern things in the hypothetical,” adding that he and co-founder Alessandro DiSanto, the company’s CFO, would consider the issue if it Brand is charged, with consideration given to “how [Brand] responds publicly, what he says, and what the facts of the case end up being.”
Jones told The Pillar that regardless of how Brand might respond to prospective criminal charges, Hallow would also take into account the prospect of scandal to evaluate its advertising relationship.
“We obviously want to have a spirit of forgiveness and a spirit of being open to real, authentic conversion and repentance, but at the same time have to be prudential in making sure that no one feels that the Church is continuing to not take abuse seriously.”
While Jones acknowledged that some Catholics might perceive Hallow’s advertising partnership with Brand as an issue of scandal already, he insisted that from his view, an advertising relationship should not be taken as an endorsement, emphasizing to The Pillar that Brand does not create content on the app, and that the company no longer reposts Brand’s social media advertisements.
“We did repost [on social media] some of the stuff that he did initially, but we don’t anymore,” Jones told The Pillar.
“We have certainly discerned and did from the beginning that he would be an advertising partner, not a content partner, so not somebody who would be on the app.”
To Jones, the distinction between an advertising partner and a Hallow content producer seemed key.
“I would understand if someone who was a victim of abuse saw someone on the app leading prayers or content [who had been accused of abuse], that would feel like Hallow or the Church didn't take this seriously, which would reinforce the story of the last 20, 30 years,” he said.
Jones told The Pillar that from his point of view, Hallow has been helpful to some victims of abuse, including clerical sexual abuse.
Telling The Pillar that Hallow takes the reality of abuse “very seriously,” Jones said that, “we have a bunch of folks on the app — in our community — who have shared stories with us of suffering abuse of all forms, including clergy abuse. Users who are on the app have reached out to us and said that God has helped heal their hearts, and the app has been able to be a part of that.”
Jones noted a “Healing Wounds” series featuring Sr. Miriam James Heidland and Dr. Bob Schuchts of the John Paul II Healing Center on the app, along with “different prayers for victims of abuse and content to try to help people journey in a journey of healing.”
Hallow, founded in December 2018, is a primarily audio-based prayer app, which includes scriptural readings, audio versions of spiritual books, homilies, reflections on liturgical readings, podcasts, and guided Catholic meditations. The app follows a “freemium” model, in which most content is free, but some is reserved to paying customers. While a baseline paid subscription is $70 annually, prices vary, as the company has reached discounted pricing agreements with some dioceses, universities, and other Catholic institutions.
The app is structured as a public benefit corporation, which requires directors and administrators to consider public benefit, in addition to profit, in making corporate decisions. The app itself has been downloaded more than 15 million times, Hallow says. The company has raised more than $100 million in capital — necessary, Jones told The Pillar, for taking “big swings” with advertisements and celebrity partnerships.
Those partnerships, Jones said, aim to attract customers reluctant to try a prayer app, who might be intrigued by known figures like Mark Wahlberg, who produces content on the app, including an audio rosary.
While the majority of Hallow users practiced the Catholic faith before using the app, Jones said the company aims to reach primarily fallen-away Catholics or people without a religious identity, and is increasingly aware of users who have had conversions which began with use of the prayer app. Jones said that Hallow’s popularity is growing among non-Catholic Christians — “in large part that is because of partnerships with things like the Daily Wire or Fox or CNN or Russell or Tucker.”
Jones told The Pillar he is also aware that some Catholics have questioned whether in-app prayer is a good idea at all, given the dangers of addiction posed by cell phone overuse.
Jones said the app is “creating digital disconnection content right now, and I do think it's really important that we disconnect digitally.”
But, he added, “technology is a tool. And it can be used, like humans typically use the tools that God gives us, for tremendous evil, but it can also be used for tremendous good.”
Hallow, he said, is “called especially to reach out to people where they are. Most people think about that geographically, but the truth is where most people are spending most of their lives is in their phone.”
“So if you're really trying to reach out to young people today, sadly you're not going to go to a bar, and you're not going to go to a geographic place.”
“You're going to go to their Instagram feed or their TikTok feed and you're going to say, ‘Hey, hey, hey, please just stop scrolling for a second. Get out of this doom loop of scroll at 2:00 AM and spend 10 minutes just closing your day in prayer.’”
Whether Russell Brand will continue to be a part of that invitation remains to be seen. Brand himself could not be reached by The Pillar for comment.
