State Street Lands Guinness Record for Bell-Ringing Outside Nasdaq

State Street Global Advisors, the asset management arm of State Street Corp., set a new mark for the “Guinness World Records” by getting the most people to ring a bell in one hour on Tuesday, which they did at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square in the hour leading up to the 4 p.m. market close.

The event was billed as a celebration of State Street’s commitment to investors, with the asset manager offering pedestrians in Times Square a free branded hat and T-shirt if they came and rang a bell set up outdoors in the popular tourist destination. State Street’s President and CEO Yie-Hsin Hung spoke at the Nasdaq and rang the closing bell of the exchange.

When it comes to serving participants in defined contribution plans, the Boston-based firm has about $982 billion in DC plan assets and 33 million participants worldwide. In 1993, the firm launched the first U.S.-listed exchange-traded fund, the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF.

To get to its record-setting number, the firm called on passerby to join State Street executives in ringing the bell, starting at 3 p.m. ET. The firm set up barriers to direct traffic through the line, with a clock overhead counting down the hour.

“We were walking around, and we heard the bell—we thought it was a [Trump election] protest,” said Karen Kelly, a New York passerby who worked as a nurse for 45 years before retiring a few weeks ago. “We got very excited, but then we just kind of got involved with it. … It was fun [ringing the bell].”

Michael Empric, a Guinness World Records adjudicator, was on site to confirm the record, which Guinness had determined would need at least 250 people to set the mark. State Street smashed that requirement with its 533 ringers.

“We were allowing all Americans to ring the bell,” said Mike Hahn, an executive creative director from McCann New York, who works with State Street on advertising. “We sell ETFs, and those are a very simple product to invest in your future. We like to think that investing in the market is investing in yourself.”

In June, State Street introduced the latest iteration of its target-date investment funds offering, IncomeWise. The solution is aimed to put a guarantee into retirement planning by integrating annuities into a TDF.