The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2021
Belong's Book of Limbo turns SIM packaging into a 120-topic offline internet
Australian telco Belong replaced SIM-card packaging with a limited-edition book of 120 linked topics, so people stay entertained while a new phone sets up.
Belong
What it had to solve
Australian telecommunications company Belong sells its SIM in limited-edition packaging that has a job to do while a customer's new phone is setting up. The brand wanted that unavoidable moment of waiting to keep people entertained.
How it works
Australian telecommunications company Belong sells its SIM in limited-edition packaging that has a job to do while a customer's new phone is setting up. The brand wanted that unavoidable moment of waiting to keep people entertained.
The packaging was designed as The Book of Limbo: a book spanning 120 wild and wonderful topics, each linking to the next like a real online wormhole. Through seamless, stream-of-consciousness writing and deep research, it takes readers from vampire squids to vampire puns, queen conspiracies to the Queen's hat collection.
The SIM inside was free, so once the phone came alive readers could continue the journey online — the waiting period became the beginning of the experience instead of dead time. The work is filed in the D&AD awards archive under Writing for Design.
Why it lands
- Instead of trying to make setup faster, the idea made the unavoidable wait valuable — entertainment built into the moment the product arrives.
- Mimicking the internet's wormhole structure offline made Belong's own promise, connection, tangible before a connection even existed.
- Ending the book with a free SIM turned readers into customers without an ad: the journey simply continued online.
What it did
The book turned an empty waiting period into an immersive reading experience and gave Belong's free SIM a story to step into once the phone was live. The work is filed in the D&AD awards archive under Writing for Design.
What you can take
Where a product forces customers to wait, the packaging is free attention: give the wait itself something to do, and the product introduction becomes content people read by choice.
Since then
The Book of Limbo launched in Australia in late September 2021 as limited-edition SIM card packaging and was entered in the D&AD Annual 2022 under Writing for Design. The archive records no sales figures, so the case stands on the mechanism: design the dead time of a product switch as content, and the product introduction becomes something people want to finish.
Sources
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card