Was £3000 on a SnapChat geofilter to promote the new £10 note money well spent by the Bank of England? We'll never know because the bank did not put together a business case prior to the campaign or carry out any evaluation once it was completed.
The BofE caught some flack in September when it paid for a filter on Snapchat to promote the new Jane Austen tenner.
The filter, which let Snapchat users overlay their posts with the images of the new note, was made available in seven cities around the country and promoted by governor Mark Carney.
In response to a Freedom of Information request from Business Insider, last month the bank confirmed that it spent £2819.28 (excluding VAT) on the filter.
Wanting to know the justification for this expense, blogger Sharon O'Dea put in another Freedom of Information request.
Responding, the BofE, says it has "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 new £10 banknote".
There were no "performance indicators" for the filter and no "evaluations" were carried out, although the filter was used 1415 times, receiving 101,000 impressions.
At a cost of £1.99 for every Snap, we'll never know whether the (public) money was well spent, although O'Dea has her suspicions, branding it "nonsense".