Oura’s Crisis Response: From Conspiracy to Clarity

Courtesy of Timo

When you offer a complicated product or service, you get the joy of doing double the work to ensure your message is understood. Often, this means taking off our marketing and PR hats for a moment and putting on our translator hats. We need to cut out the industry jargon that no one outside our ecosystem understands (what PR consultant Scott Merritt recently called “jargon monoxide”) and simplify processes until they’re clear at the most basic level.

What happens when you don’t? Oura, a company that makes wearable fitness tracking rings, learned the hard way.

On August 27, Oura announced a partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense to provide its wearable technology.

The announcement was written for investors and industry insiders: people familiar with tech language, federal contracts, and security arrangements. But when average consumers encountered it, the announcement seemed confusing and even alarming. The lack of plain language created room for speculation, which quickly spiraled into misinformation. The most damaging rumor claimed that Oura users’ data would be handed over to Palantir, a controversial company with a reputation for questionable ethics.

Outraged users took to social media, some vowing to stop wearing their rings altogether.

What happened next, though, was a strong response on Oura’s part. The company moved quickly across multiple channels to correct misinformation, explain the partnership, and reassure customers.

Social Media and Reddit
CEO Tom Hale made his first-ever TikTok: a simple, face-to-camera video explaining that the data-sharing agreement was strictly limited to the Department of Defense contract and did not involve users’ personal health data. Oura also posted the same video in Reddit threads where rumors were spreading.

@ouraring

Let us be clear and start with what matters most: Oura does not sell your data, and we never share it with third parties without your explicit consent. We know some of you are upset and misinformation is spreading. We want to be clear about what this means for you — and what it doesn’t. The DoD environment is completely separate from the Oura platform our members use. To meet strict government security requirements, some DoD programs require that our enterprise solution runs on an Impact Level 5-certified, or IL-5, secure environment. Palantir’s FedStart provides that infrastructure today, but they—and the government—do not have access to your Oura health data.Y our personal data never touches any government system, and nobody from Palantir or the government has access to your data. Full stop. For more resources and information, visit the Pulse Blog linked in bio.

♬ original sound - ouraring

Going straight to TikTok and Reddit was a smart move for several reasons: the company went straight to the source of the misinformation, Hale appeared authentic and unscripted, and the content was fact-based, direct, and trustworthy.

Hale also addressed the biggest concern — Palantir — clarifying that calling the arrangement a “partnership” was an exaggeration and affirming that no health data was being shared.

He further broke down technical terms from the original press release, such as SaaS platforms and data-sharing agreements, into everyday language that consumers could easily understand.

Website
For those wanting more detail, Oura published a blog post explaining exactly how the company uses customer data. While this information was already buried in the privacy policy, elevating it into an accessible blog post was smart. Even better, the post didn’t mention the controversy, ensuring that readers who found it organically weren’t unnecessarily alarmed. It then also becomes an evergreen piece of content that the team could use again and again.

Media
Hale’s TikTok also got significant media pickup. Whether driven by Oura’s PR outreach or organic coverage, the video was featured in FAQ-style stories across outlets, further extending the company’s efforts to correct misinformation.

Clarity Rating Scale

So what do we do with this info? We’re bringing back the Clarity Rating Scale for this story.

The Clarity Rating Scale measures effective communications on a scale of 1 to 5 using this criteria:

1. Blurry, Indistinct

2. Slightly Focused, Needs Adjustment

3. Moderately Focused, Fair Clarity

4. Well-Focused, High Clarity

5. Razor-Sharp Focus, Crystal Clear

While their initial press release caused the confusion to begin with (preventing us from a perfect 5 rating), Oura’s response has been spot-on. A big thumbs up from The EO Report team.

Oura’s experience is a cautionary tale for communicators. When we assume our audience understands technical language, we leave room for others to tell the story for us. Misinformation spreads faster than facts in our current environment. Clarity isn’t just nice to have: it’s essential. By translating industry jargon into plain language upfront, organizations can build trust, prevent confusion, and stay in control of their own narrative.