The Kiwibank sheep went viral for all the wrong reasons, and there's something every brand can learn from it
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If you've not met Buck the sheep yet, where have you been? Kiwibank's comely green-woolled ewe mascot has made New Zealand's state-owned bank a global household name, and not in a way it intended.
The original campaign centred on a video in which the AI-animated sheep was shown drinking a flat white and going for a sheer, urging viewers not to follow the flock but to choose a bank that was "born to buck the system". There was barely a bleat about it outside of New Zealand – until one user declared in an all-caps post on X that they wished to have carnal intercourse with the alluring ovine.
In two shakes of a lamb's tail, Buck was elevated to digital bombshell status, and non-official lewd AI-generated images of her began circulating on furry forums. A lot of old memes about New Zealanders resurfaced too. The fervor might have blown over in a few days, but Kiwibank went on a legal blitz issuing takedown requests, which reminded everyone that, far from bucking the system, it is the system.
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Should it have accepted that in 2026, brands can sometimes benefit from surrendering a little control?
Buck the System | Kiwibank - YouTube
Buck's a great example of a brand mascot escaping its creator's control and being reinterpreted by the internet. The attempt to regain control generated a classic Streisand effect.
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As reported by the Spinoff, the bank filed a series of copyright claims against the unauthorised use of Buck’s image (US courts have previously ruled that AI art can't be copyrighted, but Kiwibank says Buck was created by artists, with AI only used to animate the character). Its clampdown led to accusations of censorship, amplifying the story and shifting the discussion from the campaign to questions around free speech.
Mascots are big in branding in 2026. Even AI companies have realised they can help humanise their brands. Meta has Jolly, OpenAI has its Dots. But the public increasingly treats brand characters as open-source cultural assets available for remixing rather than intellectual property. The US White House has set the example, regularly turning a blind eye to copyright law to post AI-generated videos of Super Mario.
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Once a mascot becomes popular, audiences feel a sense of ownership. If the narrative takes an unexpected direction, brands tend to assume they need to correct or remove the narrative. But some have shown that accepting, or joining, the new story is also an option.
The Grimace Shake trend took McDonald's by surprise back in 2023. Social media creators began posting horror-style videos in which Grimace appeared terrifying and the milkshake caused an agonising death. Rather than trying to suppress it, McDonald's occasionally acknowledged it with playful responses. It benefited from massive visibility, younger audiences felt they were driving the conversation, and the brand remained part of the joke rather than the target.
Duolingo understood the power of this earlier than most. When users turned its mascot Duo into an obsessive, threatening owl, the company embraced the characterisation, and the joke became one of the most successful social media mascot strategies of the past decade. Duo evolved from a language-learning mascot into an internet meme machine and the start of a story worthy of a soap opera, complete with faked death.
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Other examples include Reddit's Snoo, who's seen as belonging as much to the community as the company, and GitHub's Octocat, which has become an creation platform in its own right, spawning hundreds of unofficial variants that have largely been encouraged.
Brands need to distinguish between genuinely harmful content on the one hand and fan art and undesired but harmless remixing on the other. Aabuse, harassment, hate speech or scams have to be addressed. Japan has been taking diplomatic steps to try to get the White House to stop using Nintendo characters out of a real fear that the US government's copyright theft could harm the company's reputation and business because people could think it's an approved collaboration.
But trying to eliminate jokes, memes, or parodies from ordinary people is often unwinnable. The internet often interprets suppression as evidence that a joke is worth repeating, and a legal response can transform a niche joke into a national news story.
In contrast, a humorous response can often diffuse a situation. Back in 2016, Kellogg's Frosties made a perfectly elegant response to furries who had been creating Tony the Tiger porn: "let’s keep things gr-r-reat – & family-friendly if you could. Cubs could be watching", it wrote on X.
Today, the ubiquity of AI-generated imagery makes it even harder to keep control. If the brand itself used AI like Kiwibank did, audiences might be more likely to consider a mascot as fair game. The smartest strategy might be to accept that the attention has value, leave room for audience creativity and to try to remain part of the conversation after control has inevitably been lost.