The Bank of England spent £3,000 on a Snapchat geofilter in September of this year, but when asked for justification for the expense, the bank had no response.
The money went towards promoting the new £10 Jane Austen note, with the filter overlaying images of the bank note over a user’s face. It was rolled out to users in seven cities across England, according to the bank.
When asked about the reason behind the filter (via a Freedom of Information request, put in by blogger Sharon O’Dea), the Bank of England stated that is had “no recorded information held about the specific objectives of the social media aspect, including the Snapchat geofilter, of the Bank’s overall educational campaign to raise awareness of the £10 banknote.”
The filter, according to the bank’s FOI response, was used 1,415 times and earned 101,000 “impressions.”
Otherwise, there were no performance indicators “used to measure the ‘success’” of the filter, the bank stated.
Read more at Finextra and WhatDoTheyKnow.