Oura tells you whether to keep snoozing or jump into your workout in brand campaign from Mischief

Last month just after Election Day, wearable tech brand Oura went to New York’s Times Square to show Americans just how much sleep they lost fretting over the polls. (More than 138 million hours, according to its user data.) Now, the brand wants to remind consumers how important their health data is to everyday life with a new brand campaign centered on the idea “know why you feel how you feel.” A woman hits her alarm clock hoping to get up and work out, but ends up snoozing a bit more. A man toils away at work but then realizes he may need to take a break. A cyclist speeds down the road on her bike, ready for an intense workout. With each individual, the Oura ring is there to keep them tuned into what their bodies need at various points in time. The soundtrack, a reworked version of the children’s tune “If you’re happy and you know it,” drives home the point that listening to your own personal health data is crucial to their overall well-being. “If you’re tired and you know it skip the gym. If you haven’t fully recovered from yesterday’s workout skip the gym. If your readiness score is weak and you could use a bit more sleep, if you’re burnt out and you know it, skip the gym.” Also created out of Mischief and directed by Scott Cudmore via Revolver Films, the anthemic ad has the sophisticated production value you’d expect from a major sports brand, but its stars are everyday people trying to go about their day while fitting in health needs along the way. According to Mischief @ No Fixed Address Chief Creative Officer Greg Hahn, the brand “really wanted to show how Oura understands your body and helps you decide what you need at a particular time. A lot of the big sports brand ads feel very cold, inhuman, pushing you and driving you. We wanted this to feel like we understand you. We wanted it to have a little bit more of a personal voice. Also we wanted to show how in-depth the information is.” According to Jessica English, VP of brand at Oura, overall the brand’s marketing goal is “to connect the benefits the Oura Ring and app provides with the needs we know our audience has. Unlike most in our category, we prioritize personalization and meet our audience where they are, as they are, in their experience with health.” The content the brand creates strives to educate the audience “on what real health means and looks like, and with a human understanding that health is often hard to navigate. In short, we get it.” Oura had appointed Mischief as its creative advertising partner following a pitch earlier this year. It’s the brand’s first creative agency partnership and Mischief’s first major pitch win. In its RFP to agencies, Oura had set forth the goal to create a “full-funnel” campaign that connected to new and different audiences emotionally and rationally. Also, it had to clearly communicate what the Oura Ring does. It’s not exactly the easiest product to understand—it’s wearable tech with advanced biosensors in the form of a simple ring that aims to give its users personalized health data. Oura Head of Creative Abdul Ovaice says that during the RFP process, “we wanted to see [from agencies] strategic thinking and ‘the math’ that would go into creative ideas. We didn’t ask for concepts.” The company ultimately went with Mischief because it “understood the [brand’s] new ideas would be defined by those not bound by the past, but rather inspired by it like improvisational jazz.” The Oura Ring debuted in 2015 on Kickstarter as a sleep tracker, but has since evolved to become a broader health tracking device. During the pandemic, the brand partnered with the NBA to help teams in the Orlando bubble flag potential onset of COVID-19 symptoms. Other sports partnerships include the WNBA and Aston Martin Red Bull racing. The brand has also partnered with major research institutions like UCSF on the TemPredict study, which aims to discern whether physiological data from the Oura Ring, combined with responses to symptom surveys can predict illness symptoms. Until now, “the Oura story, for the most part, has been told on our behalf through press and partners,” English says. “To cement our position as a health lifestyle brand that thinks differently from those in our category, we needed to tell our story in our own words as well.” The new spot, which includes 30-, 15- and 6-second cutdowns, is running on connected TV, paid social and in digital assets across brand channels. It's just the beginning of a larger brand campaign. “We’ll have more ‘moments’ along the way, but knowing why you feel how you feel with Oura is an evergreen concept,” English says.

Oura tells you whether to keep snoozing or jump into your workout in brand campaign from Mischief

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