Fearless Girl earns a free media boon for State Street

NEW YO R K In the 51 days since Fearless Girl took her defiant place in front of Wall Street’s charging bull, she’s never lacked for company.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and hundreds of visiting women and girls have tweeted selfies with artist Kristen Visbal’s bronze statue. Fearless Girl has been showered with flowers and adorned with feminist buttons, pink “pussyhats” and even a Donald Trump “Make America Great Again” cap.

All that attention is worth real money. The marketing and media exposure for State Street Corp., the custody bank that installed the statue for International Women’s Day, is worth US$7.4 million, said Eric Smallwood of Apex Marketing, which measures the value of media placement and sponsorships. State Street spent just US$26 million on advertising in all of 2016, according to Kantar Media, which tracks advertising spending.

The statue also earned Bostonbased State Street almost 70 per cent of financial services media the next day.

“That’s a pretty huge marketing victory,” said Kara Burney, senior director of marketing at TrackMaven, which measures social-media mentions.

She cited 500,000 shares on networks including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

State Street unveiled Fearless Girl in conjunction with a fresh call on 3,500 companies to add more women to their boards.