The Daily Star, Pathao, and ShopUp collaborated together to initiate a digital campaign called "Bondhutte Bondi". The name translates to "Locked in Friendship" in English. The campaign marked International Friendship Day which was observed on July 31, 2020. The core idea of the campaign was to bring the netizens to a single platform through storytelling and celebrate the friendship in the online sphere.

The countrywide lockdown due to coronavirus outbreak in March 2020, had forced everyone to stay in their homes. With the closure of educational institutions, offices and all other public places has restricted the physical interactions and hangouts with our friends and closed ones. People have limited their social interactions for months. But this lockdown life could no way restrict our friendship and loosen our bonds, rather it let us rediscover our friendship in a new way. People have been connected with their friends through interesting and exciting online activities and their everlasting bonds show-up in our social-media feeds every now and then. Video calls, having fun in online classes, sharing new recipes, fighting in the online games, 10-days challenges –- these became the new exciting ways to be connected to our friends.

The campaign "Bondhutte Bondi (Locked in Friendship)" was to celebrate this newness in our friendship we have experienced during this lockdown and share the friendship to every corner of the country through storytelling. A microsite (http://campaign.thedailystar.net/friendshipday2020/) was created for the campaign where participants shared their own funny and memorable stories of their virtual friendship moments. People could vote online for their favourite stories and 10 winners were selected based on public votes. The winners received gifts from the sponsors which was delivered at their doorsteps. Some wonderful stories came out through this campaign, for example, some friends have started up new online business during this lockdown; some have initiated fundraising programme for the Covid-19 affected people; some friends are are teaching underprivileged children together. These stories not only amazing but also inspiration to many.

The microsite had a cool feature which was a "Friendship Map". Where the coronavirus chronicle was taking its toll on people's life and various regions of the country were being marked as "Red Zone", this campaign aimed to spread the positivity among people in the middle of this anxiety period. Hence, a digital map of Bangladesh was created in the microsite with 64 districts of Bangladesh. There was a district-selection option while participating in the campaign. With each and every participation, one "heart-sign" was added in the district from where the participants is taking part from. And within few days, the map was filled with a huge number of heart-signs and thus friendship was spread from one corner of the country to another.

The campaign exemplified the power of user-generated-content and storytelling and turn this into an impactful visualization. And that's how the core message of the campaign was delivered- no matter where we are, we are locked in friendship.

To know more about the campaign, visit http://campaign.thedailystar.net/friendshipday2020/

The writer is Nourin Jahan Rinta, Marketing Executive at The Daily Star. You can connect with her at naurinta@thedailystar.net