SSGA - Fearless Girl

2017 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity - Most Awarded Campaign - 20 Cannes Lions

Titanium - Grand Prix, Grand Prix Glass, Grand Prix Outdoor, Grand Prix PR

The Charging Bull towers 11 feet tall at its shoulder. A staggering 7,100 pounds of shimmering bronze, it stands mid-charge, feet splayed across the sliver of park called Bowling Green at the gateway to New York’s financial district. The statue is the definitive symbol of Wall Street: powerful, masculine and ready to gore the competition. For years, most denizens of the Street hurried past it on their way to the towers of American finance. Then, unexpectedly, on March 8, 2017, a young girl in a sundress, also made of bronze, appeared in front of him. Hands placed on her hips, she seemed to stare him down. Suddenly the bull’s legs seemed to herald not so much a charge into battle as an out of control beast stopped in its tracks.

Fearless Girl was immediately hailed as a powerful feminist symbol. The Women’s March had just channeled the outrage that millions felt after Hillary Clinton’s loss to a man known for his boorish behavior towards women, and the #MeToo movement was about to shake up corporate America. On Wall Street, many hoped the statue’s bold statement would finally initiate a new era of diversity.

Worth.com 2019

With just over 3 months until International Women’s Day, most people would prepare a CAD file, make a statue out of fiberglass and paint it using a bronze metallic paint. That would also make sense because we only had a 1 week permit from the NYC Department of Transportation. But we wanted Fearless Girl to be substantial and have the exact look and feel of the bronze metal Charging Bull. And it’s a good thing we did since she’s still standing six years later.

We hired artist Kristen Vizbal on December 5th, which left her less than a month to sculpt the clay so that it could be rushed through the casting process. The mold was made in early January and the bronze was cast in a foundry in Baltimore. The install began at midnight. At sunrise we had an hour to capture our hero still + shoot and edit our video, in order to release to the press before the morning news cycle. On Twitter, Fearless Girl generated more than 1 billion impressions in its first 12 hours and broke 4.6 billion impressions within 12 weeks. On Instagram, Fearless Girl  sparked almost a quarter-million unique posts featuring the statue in three months. Fearless Girl was moved in front of the New York Stock Exchange in December 2018 where she still stands.

September 2020 - In tribute to the late Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, on the day of her passing, we wrapped a lace collar on Fearless Girl similar to the iconic lace collars that RBG wore…this full page ad ran in the Sunday New York Times with the line…

“Here’s to the original.”