New Zealand bank’s sheep mascot kicks off unlikely free speech row
The mascot of a New Zealand bank has become the subject of an unlikely controversy over the right to make memes.
It all began when Kiwibank tried to remove “explicit” memes sexualising its mascot – Buck the Sheep.
The bank unveiled “Buck” on 3 July in a marketing campaign showing a cute sheep with green wool, urging consumers to “bank Kiwi”.
It didn’t take long for bizarre posts to appear on social media, some sexualising Buck and others stating that they wanted to “f***” it”.
The bank responded in September by sending copyright notices demanding the takedown of posts featuring the mascot from X and Bluesky. The platforms in turn replaced the pictures with a notice reading: “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”
A spokesperson said Kiwibank had acted to protect its intellectual property and because it worried that sexualised material involving Buck could be harmful and illegal.
The bank’s notices led to the removal of posts by at least 10 X accounts and a number of Bluesky artists, according to Spinoff.
The attempted clampdown backfired, however, as social media was flooded by similar posts about Buck and the original post garnered over four million views.
“What if we all say the Kiwibank sheep is sexy. They can’t get us all,” an online user posted.
The controversy even reached American late-night TV, where it was picked up by Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver. He said Kiwibank’s crackdown had proved “completely counterproductive” and noted the bank had abandoned the promotion with Buck.
“The first five weeks after that ad campaign launched, out of the 10 Tiktoks they posted, six featured Buck,” he said.
“But since then they have posted 18 times and the sheep is in exactly none of them. Basically, the sheep has gone.”
The Free Speech Union, meanwhile, wrote an open letter to Kiwibank’s chief executive criticising the attempted crackdown.
“Whether people found the posts funny, offensive or simply baffling, they were jokes about a bank’s mascot. At least one used Kiwibank’s own advertising image, unaltered, with the joke in the caption,” the advocacy group said.
