The archive · PR & Stunts · Marketing decision · 2017–2018
Fearless Girl: a statue faces Wall Street's bull — SHE fund volume +384%, Grand Effie
State Street and McCann placed a bronze girl before Wall Street's Charging Bull; the SHE fund's trading volume rose 384% in three days.
State Street Global Advisors
What it had to solve
State Street Global Advisors had launched SHE, an ETF tracking companies with women in senior leadership, but the fund was barely noticed and corporate boards still had few women. For International Women's Day 2017 it wanted a single image that would make the case for gender diversity impossible to ignore.
How it works
For International Women's Day 2017, State Street Global Advisors and McCann New York installed a bronze statue of a young girl opposite Wall Street's Charging Bull in Bowling Green, with a plaque reading 'Know the power of women in leadership. She makes a difference.' The placement was the argument: a small girl holding her ground against the symbol of corporate America.
The statue promoted SHE, State Street's exchange-traded fund that tracks companies with women in senior leadership. According to the campaign's Grand Effie-winning entry, SHE's average daily trading volume rose 384% within three days of the launch. The sculpture was meant to stay only seven days, but it became a landmark and earned a longer stay.
Business effects outlasted the stunt: State Street reported that more than 300 companies added a female director in response, and that the share of Russell 3000 companies with no female director fell from 24% to 16%. The campaign won the 2018 North American Grand Effie, with State Street named the region's most effective marketer and brand.
Why it lands
- It turned a business objective into a physical object in the most symbolic public space in finance — no bought media could match that placement.
- The statue was designed to be photographed, so tourists, news crews and social feeds became free distribution.
- It gave an invisible financial product — an ETF — a human, emotional form that anyone could understand.
- The idea outlived the campaign window: it became a permanent landmark that kept generating coverage and anchored a years-long stewardship push on board diversity.
What it did
SHE's average daily trading volume rose 384% within three days, per the campaign's Grand Effie-winning entry. State Street was named 2018's most effective marketer and brand in North America, and more than 300 companies added a female director in response to the statue's call.
What you can take
Make the idea an object, not a message: once the statue existed, every photo, news segment and selfie was distribution, and the media plan became an amplifier rather than the carrier.
Since then
The statue was removed from Bowling Green in late 2018 after complaints that it distracted from the Charging Bull, then re-installed on December 10, 2018 facing the New York Stock Exchange, where State Street says it remains, visited by millions. It anchored State Street's stewardship program urging companies to add female directors, and it drew criticism too — including scrutiny of State Street's own record on gender and pay, which became part of the statue's story.
Sources
- It Worked. Fearless Girl Wins the Grand Effie at the 2018 North American Effie Awards
- 'Fearless Girl' unveiled in front of NYSE, moved away from 'Charging Bull'
- Our History
- State Street Global Advisors (SSGA): Fearless Girl
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