Some say television’s audience reinvigorated when color came onto the scene. Oura is looking for a Pleasantville moment of its own.
The wearable fitness tech company recently debuted the Oura Ring 4 Ceramic, which is available in four new colors and made from zirconia ceramic, a departure from the brand’s existing metal-forward colors. The product drop also comes alongside new multi-ring support capabilities, along with a new charging case, and additional health features.
To announce it all to the world, Oura rolled out a campaign across social media, traditional TV and CTV, and OOH activations in New York, LA, London, Berlin, and Helsinki, along with a series of “vignettes” called “Ring True to You” that focus on a message of self-expression. It’s all aimed at grabbing Gen Z and millennial consumers, which Oura CMO Doug Sweeny says marks a pivot from the brand’s previous focus on men and older customers.
“We wanted to get out of the clichés of ‘young people doing yoga’ and [avoid] the tropes,” Sweeny told Marketing Brew. “We wanted to broaden it up and talk about really living your best life.”
Show it off
Oura’s “Ring True to You” ad spot and the accompanying vignettes feature the new ring being worn by young people in a variety of scenarios, including a handshake between friends, drumming on a desk, and completing a new outfit. Rather than position the ring in what might be a more expected healthcare or athletic setting, Sweeny said that showing the product off in everyday life was a way to stand out from Oura’s previous approach.
“When we introduced smart rings, the technology or the product itself [fell] into the background. Like, it’s on your body, but it’s sort of discrete,” Sweeny said. “This is a shift in that it’s actually about expression, and it’s about your own style.”
With this campaign and product, Oura is also looking to lean into the idea of tech as fashion.
“Within the smart-ring category, I think we’re breaking new ground here,” he said, noting that the ability to collect and wear multiple colors and styles of Oura rings stands out from other wearable fitness trackers that may not be as interchangeable. With the Oura Ring 4’s colorful appearance, Sweeny said the campaign seeks to emphasize the visibility of the product, as opposed to some other tech-as-fashion products on the market that aim to blend in.
Online chatter
On social media, Oura is particularly focusing on TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram in an effort to reach a targeted youth audience. “We wanted to lean into the audience and where they show up,” Sweeny said.
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This isn’t the first time Oura has shown up on these platforms, but this campaign does feature a virtual try-on filter on Snapchat, which is the company’s first foray into that kind of tech. The goal of that filter, Sweeny said, is to help show off the new multi-ring support capability.
The campaign comes a few months after Oura faced backlash for its connection to the software company Palantir, which creates military intelligence and surveillance tools, and its work with the Department of Defense, with critics wondering what that could mean for user data privacy. At the time, Tom Hale, Oura’s CEO, responded to the concerns in a TikTok, stating that the company’s work with the DoD and Palantir is separate from its consumer work, and saying that neither party has access to Oura user data. “Your personal data never touches any government system, and nobody from Palantir or the government has access to your data, full stop,” Hale says in the TikTok.
Sweeny said the Oura Ring 4 Ceramic campaign was not designed in response to the controversy, and said he doesn’t expect to see any lingering effects in the campaign’s reception. Instead, the social-forward and youth-focused campaign is designed to boost what Sweeny called Oura’s “most important 2025 hardware launch,” which means consumers will see the campaign running into the new year.
“There’s no plan to stop supporting it,” Sweeny said.
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