Oura goes for the impossible for its first film franchise partnership

The girlies are all in on Oura rings. Now, the wellness-tracking wearables brand is hoping Tom Cruise can help get the boys on board, too.

Ahead of Mission Impossible —The Final Reckoning’s Memorial Day weekend premiere, the fitness tech brand ran an adrenaline-filled campaign featuring exclusive stunt footage from the film in partnership with Paramount Studios. The spot shows main character Ethan Hunt, played by Cruise, climbing out of a biplane mid-flight as part of one of the most daring stunts out of the film, alongside messaging about the Oura ring’s ability to help track stress.

The ad appeared in 15- and 30-second versions that primarily aired on national broadcast TV with additional social support throughout the first three weeks of May leading up to the movie’s record-breaking release.

The partnership marked the first time Oura, a 12-year-old company, had waded into the movie marketing waters, Doug Sweeny, CMO, told us. But the partnership wasn’t just about tapping into an iconic franchise—it was aimed at helping Oura further resonate with men.

“We’ve had amazing growth on the women’s side of the business through our women’s health product,” Sweeny said. “Our men’s business is growing as well, but we wanted to put a finer point on that, and have a dedicated effort in this window of time in the spring to really focus on the male target overall.”

It’s raining men

A quick scroll through #OuraRing on TikTok reveals legions of young women reviewing the fitness tech, with many focused on the ring’s ability to help track menstrual cycles, score sleep, and predict readiness for the day. In 2024, Oura was valued at $5.2 billion and had sold more than 2.5 million rings, with more than half of its customer base identifying as women.

While women seem to have buoyed the company’s success, Sweeny said there’s room for growth among men interested in tracking wellness markers. In designing the Mission: Impossible campaign, the team wanted to highlight the product’s ability to help track stress and fitness, two components that Sweeny said are particularly important to men.

“We’re always balancing between rigorous health storytelling on cardiovascular age, or women’s health and some of our fertility products, or sleep and resilience,” Sweeny said. “This clearly leans on the pop culture side, and then leaning on stress [and] an underlying activity component.”

To reach men who might be interested in the product, Oura ran the ad against programming like the NBA conference finals, the PGA championship, and the Survivor finale. It was an atypical media buy for the company, according to Sweeny, although he noted that running ads during appointment-based live viewing like sports will continue to be key to future campaigns. The company declined to share specific results, but said that it saw strong engagement with older (age 45+) males.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it…

To create the ad, Oura got the rights to work with Mission: Impossible IP, which meant the Oura team got access to behind-the-scenes stunt footage that wasn’t being used in the film. Sweeny said the footage showed off how “insane” and physically demanding the biplane stunt was—something that aligned well with its messaging about tracking stress levels.

“We wanted to come at it in a different way than the trailers or whatever else was being shown out on social media,” Sweeny said.

Working with a massive franchise, though, doesn’t come without challenges. While concepting the spot, Oura, UEG, and Paramount worked together on initial ideas, and after arriving at two different concepts, the final approval had to go through what Sweeny called “a Tom review.”

“He is approving every piece of creative related to the franchise,” Sweeny said. “We were kind of very quickly on the same page, which allowed us to get this off the ground. But it is a three- or four-legged stool, if you will, in terms of the partners involved.”

While the campaign was Oura’s first official film franchise partnership, the brand isn’t brand-new to Hollywood, albeit in a different way. Sweeny said that alongside its wider consumer audience, Oura specifically sells its rings to subsects including stunt performers.

“There are a lot of [stunt] trainers who we have connections with. The person who trains Ryan Reynolds for Deadpool is a close friend of the brand,” Sweeny said. “Oura actually is organically integrated into those communities, because it’s about wellness and well-being and your overall health and performance and being ready.”

Sweeny said Oura wouldn’t work with just any film for movie-based marketing. With Mission: Impossible, Sweeny said the team was attracted to the quality tied to Tom Cruise movies, the franchise’s built-in audience, and its air of exclusivity—for Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, Paramount worked with just three brands in addition to Oura: Delta, Jeep, and Oakley.

But if Wicked: For Good or a second Barbie film were to come knocking? According to Sweeny, “Never say never.”