Every trip abroad starts with the same word, typed in every language to the people who matter. It is the most universal moment in travel, and the only moment when connectivity is truly felt. This is a proposal to make Airalo own it, across B2C, B2B and B2B2C.
Airalo invented the eSIM store and went from 20 to 30 million customers in about a year. It has the scale, the partner network and, since May 2026, its most ambitious campaign. What it does not have yet is one brand behaving the same way in every region and every business line.
Three good ideas, three agencies, three tones of voice. Each one works on its own. Together they do not yet add up to a single memory of the brand. That is the job this role exists to do.
Travel eSIM is growing fast and turning into a commodity at the same time. Setup is being absorbed by the operating system, distribution by partners, and the claims by a single word everyone uses.
iOS 26 now nudges travelers toward their travel eSIM around departure. iPhone Air is eSIM-only worldwide, iPhone 17 in a dozen markets. Friction falls, and the choice of provider moves earlier and becomes stickier.[11][12]
Vodafone sells a travel eSIM for 206 destinations. Orange Travel sells inside Trip.com. Juniper calls it pivotal that operators launch their own offers in 2026.[9][13][14]
Revolut and N26 sell travel eSIMs inside the banking app, next to the card people already pay with abroad.[15][16]
Holafly, Nomad, Maya Mobile, Saily Ultra and Airalo all use the word, most with fair-use limits. When the whole category says the same thing, nobody owns it.[17][18][19]
Roland Berger expects super-apps, fintechs, travel agencies and airlines to carry about 45% of travel eSIM activations by 2030, while revenue per user falls.[20]
When the product becomes invisible, the brand has to be seen somewhere else. The question is where.
Wheels on the tarmac. Seatbelt sign still on. Airplane mode off. For a few seconds, every phone on the plane is searching. Then, before passport control and before the bags, one message goes out to someone at home.
It is the first thing people do with connectivity abroad, and the one moment they notice it. Today that moment is hosted by someone else. For most travelers, the first message they receive abroad comes from their home carrier, with a price list attached.
Warm, human, instant. The reason connectivity matters.
Welcome to your destination. Data roaming is charged at the following rates…
A tariff notice. The reason travelers are afraid of their phone abroad: 82% of Australians surveyed by Optus have faced or feared unexpected roaming charges [21].
The May campaign found the right promise. This proposal keeps it and gives it a place to live: one moment, repeated millions of times a day, in every market, identical in every culture and native to each of them.
The why. Connectivity as access to people, places and culture, not a technical service. It stays the brand’s sign-off.
The when and the where. The moment the promise becomes true. Every campaign, product touchpoint and partner surface is built around it.
The number. The time between an eSIM’s first contact with a destination network and its first data session, measured with Product and network partners, published by destination.
For anyone who crosses a border with a phone, Airalo is the reason the first word of the trip is “landed”, and never “how much?”
Local networks, bought before the flight, live on arrival. The platform describes what Airalo already does, so every claim can be proven.
Every language has its word for it. One idea that needs no translation, only local voices. That is what a global brand with four regional teams needs.
The category talks in gigabytes, days and “unlimited”. Nobody speaks for the moment itself. The leader should claim it before an operating system or a carrier does.
It works for a backpacker, a travel manager and an airline partner, which is the test for a brand that runs B2C, B2B and B2B2C at once.
The masterbrand stays single. Each business line takes the same moment and says what it means for its own buyer.
| AiraloConsumer · B2C | Airalo for BusinessCompanies · B2B | Airalo PartnersEmbedded · B2B2C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Line | Land local. | Nobody on your team lands offline. | Give your customers the landing. |
| Who decides | 30M+ travelers, and the 88% who have not switched yet | Travel managers, HR and finance | Airlines, travel agencies, fintechs, creators, 5,000+ partners |
| Minute one means | A message home, a map, a ride | Duty of care: every traveler reachable from the tarmac | Their customer’s best moment of the trip, inside their app |
| Proof in place | 200+ destinations, 53 languages, 24/7 support | SSO, budget controls, activation status in the admin dashboard [22] | API, SDK, co-branded pages, Airmoney vouchers [3][22] |
| Brand job | Grow the category and win the first eSIM | Turn safety into a reason to choose | Stay visible where the customer belongs to someone else |
The B2B2C question is the one I know best. At Mastercard, the brand lived in consumers’ wallets but was sold by banks. The partner owns the customer. The ingredient brand owns the moment.
If partner channels reach 45% of activations by 2030 and Airalo stays white label there, a large share of its future customers will use Airalo without ever meeting it. The ladder is designed with Partnerships, so visibility becomes a commercial choice rather than an accident.
Each one sits at a real touchpoint, carries the same platform, and is measured on a number the business already cares about.
Replace the carrier’s price list with a local’s welcome. When an Airalo eSIM first connects, the notification carries one line written by someone who lives there. 200+ destinations, 200+ voices. It carries “Connection Means The World” into the product itself, then becomes a social series and a creator program.
The baggage claim is the best-timed media space in travel. Everyone there has just landed, has a phone in hand and fifteen minutes to wait. A pilot in three hub airports, with a QR code that installs a plan over airport wifi in minutes.
“Your bag is late. Your internet doesn’t have to be.”
Airalo can see, anonymised and in aggregate, where and when eSIMs come online. Published monthly, that becomes a map of where the world is landing: rising destinations, the corridors of the season, the fastest airports to connect. Travel media get a story. Tourism boards and airlines get a reason to call. Built with Legal and Privacy, aggregates only.
A content and demo program for travel managers about the least managed hour of any business trip, between the aircraft door and the hotel. A pledge companies can sign: no one on our team lands offline. Guide, webinar series, dashboard demo.
The ingredient mark, shown at first connection inside partner flows, plus a partner kit: co-marketing templates, launch playbook, regional adaptations. The same moment, carried by 5,000 other brands.
APAC, Arabia & Africa, Europe, the Americas. The voice is the same everywhere. The accent belongs to each region. Four principles hold it together.
People buy what connectivity lets them do. The specs come second, and always come.
Show places the way the people who live there see them. It is what the May film started.
Many travelers still don’t understand eSIM. In one Optus survey, 36.7% avoided it out of confusion [21]. Explain in one sentence, then play.
Dublin can be cheeky. Riyadh and Tokyo will set their own register. The voice stays, the dose changes.
Guidelines as a living system instead of a PDF: tokens, templates, a single brief format, prompt libraries for AI-assisted production with a human review gate, a partner kit, and a creative review every two weeks that brings the four regions into the same room.
One lead agency holds the platform. Regional specialists and creators bring the accents. Every piece of work answers the same question before it ships: what does this do for minute one?
Six numbers, each with an owner and an action attached. A monthly dashboard for the CMO, a quarterly brand health review with leadership.
| Metric | What it tells us | Rhythm |
|---|---|---|
| First-eSIM share | Of the travelers buying their very first eSIM, how many choose Airalo, by market. The leader’s number: category growth that lands on Airalo. | Monthly |
| Awareness and consideration | Unaided and aided, by region, against the top four competitors. Tracker in the eight markets of the May campaign first. | Quarterly |
| Branded search share | Airalo’s share of branded search against Holafly, Saily, Nomad and carrier travel offers. The fastest signal of brand pull. | Monthly |
| Minute One | Time from first network contact to first data session, by destination. Owned with Product, published as proof. | Monthly |
| Partner visibility | Share of partner-sold eSIMs carrying the Airalo mark, and its trend by partner type. | Quarterly |
| Distinctive assets | Recognition of the arrival codes with the logo hidden. Proof that the brand is building memory, not only reach. | Twice a year |
In the short term, the numbers never lie. In the long term, the brand is what compounds.
A structure that follows the platform: one global idea, regional ownership, shared crafts. To be sized with the CMO against the current team and the 2027 plan.
Owns the market and the plan.
Owns the work and the bar.
Owns consistency at scale.
Owns the owned channels.
Every regional brand manager also owns one global craft: the Landed Index, the creator program, the partner kit. Leading a market and a capability at once is the fastest path to leadership.
Each lead is measured on the growth of their people as much as on their market. Clear levels, a development plan per person, reviewed every quarter.
The creative review is also where judgment is taught. Decisions are explained, so the bar travels across time zones without me in the room.
I did not write this to tell Airalo what to do. I wrote it to show how I work: find the one moment a brand can own, then build the system that lets every market say it in its own accent.
I have built consumer brands at DDB Paris, Mastercard and, for ten years, at Faust on Kellogg’s, Panini, Maille and Bosch. I ran group communication for STid across Dubai, Riyadh, London, Las Vegas and Mexico, and trained every international team in a new narrative and new sales tools through a hacking lab. I built a digital business unit from zero at Kaiman, ran an agency office for Oxygen, founded and led my own agency for eight years, and today lead communication and marketing at ENOÉ Énergie while running Unstable Narrative, my brand strategy practice.
An independent proposal written by Clément Menviel from public information, as part of an application. It is not affiliated with, commissioned or endorsed by Airalo. Campaign and product names belong to their owners. Example copy is illustrative.