After becoming the first prayer app to ever break into the Top 10 in the App Store, Hallow has found more success after its first televised commercial. The 30-second ad, featuring Mark Wahlberg and Jonathan Roumie, ran during Super Bowl LVIII. If you missed it, it can be viewed below.
While the ad featured both Mark Wahlberg and Jonathan Roumie (Jesus in The Chosen), Wahlberg took center stage as narrator, reading a prayer before inviting all viewers to pray with Hallow during the season of Lent. Wahlberg’s prayer went:
We take this moment to give you thanks. We thank you for this time to come together as a family, as friends, and as a country. Help us Lord, especially this Lent, to grow closer to you. Amen.
While the prayer was short, it had a quiet reverence to it that was especially striking when juxtaposed against all the glamor and bombast of the many attractions of the Super Bowl. The immediate response to the ad suggests that it resonated with viewers, because the downloads began to surge. In a tweet, Hallow CEO Alex Jones reported the most downloads in a single minute in Hallow’s history. For a brief time, the prayer app rose above Netflix, Dominos, and ESPN.
Jones told News Nation that Hallow’s approach to the ad, which was reportedly aired in 15 markets, was to avoid seeming “preachy.” He said that their main goal was to invite viewers to spend “five minutes of silence, [or] 10 minutes of silence with God.” Jones added, after explaining how “blown away” he was by the response:
We’ve heard from many who were inspired to join us and give prayer a try for the first time in a long time this Lent.
Visit Hallow’s official website to learn more about their “Prayer40” Lenten campaign and start praying with the app today.
