John Oliver features segment on Kiwibank’s ‘attractive’ Buck the Sheep controversy
The Kiwibank mascot has found international fame thanks to an online controversy involving posts sexualising Buck the Sheep.
After weeks of online chatter mostly within New Zealand, the free speech row made it onto the world stage with comedian John Oliver running a segment on it in his hit talk show, Last Week Tonight.
If you have been blessed to miss the controversy so far, let’s catch you up: it all began in July when a Twitter (okay, X) user posted: “I want to f*** the Kiwibank sheep”, alongside a gif featuring Buck.
One person spotted the tweet and made a valid point: “Years of effort to convince the world New Zealanders don’t want to f*** sheep has gone down the drain in one tweet”.
It would have likely gone mostly unnoticed if it wasn’t for Kiwibank deciding to issue copyright infringements to the user and anyone who posted sexualising the mascot starring in its latest “Bank Kiwi” marketing campaign.
Kiwibank engaged law firm MinterEllisonRuddWatts to issue the infringement notices under the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The notices targeted posts across multiple social media platforms, including X and Bluesky. X acted on the notices and, in September, began removing content that featured Buck.
A subsequent investigation by The Spinoff’s Hayden Donnell found multiple internet users who had received copyright infringement notices from Kiwibank after posting about Buck the Sheep.
Kiwibank’s attempt to stop people sexualising the mascot seems to have backfired, with more people posting about it.
“Kiwibank’s aggressive response was completely counterproductive,” Oliver said during the segment.
“Basically, a lot of New Zealanders are going full I am Spartacus right now. If that is Spartacus wanted to f*** the Kiwibank sheep,” he added.
Oliver played a clip of Donnell explaining that he’d spoken to multiple people who had been issued copyright notices, including some who had to explain their tweet was a joke.
“My tweet was a joke, obviously, I hope. I do not think the drawing of a sheep is sexy – put that in the paper,” one of the people told the Spinoff journalist.
Oliver said that was “an incredible thing to feel the need to clarify.”
Others, however, did admit to considering Buck “an attractive sheep”, particularly for members of the furry community.
“She does have, what some have referred to as come-hither eyes, and particularly in the moment in the ad where she gets a haircut,” Donnell said.
“This is what’s really got people going.”
The talk show host played a portion of the Kiwibank ad during the segment and, aside from the mascot controversy, also mentioned that he did not want his bank to “buck the system”.
Oliver noticed that Kiwibank has all but stopped posting Buck on its social media.
Comments had also been disabled on the bank’s posts featuring the mascot.
Kiwibank has previously released a statement stating that the copyright notices were about protecting the company’s intellectual property as it was concerned about the sexualised nature of the posts.
Buck was created by Fathom VFX using CGI.