• by Christine Champagne , April 29, 2011

Gregor, the Russian billionaire who flaunts his ludicrously lavish lifestyle in the DirecTV commercials "Opulence, I Has It" and "I Am Epic Win," is quite a character. But his petite lap giraffe - seen perched next to the oligarch on a couch in one spot and walking on a tiny treadmill in another - is a true scene-stealer.

Given how adorable the little creature is, Grey New York, the agency that created the campaign, was inundated with queries as to where one could purchase a mini giraffe after the spots ran. Unfortunately, they don't really exist (the petite lap giraffe we've come to love was brought to life by the visual-effects artisans at The Mill), but the agency decided to have a little fun with the fanciful idea, creating petitelapgiraffe.com.

The site is for Sokoblovsky Farms, a fictional breeder of petite lap giraffes and features giraffe-cam video of the farm's resident "bull," Vladimir, and photos of other tiny giraffes, including one soaking in a bubble bath.

You can put your name on the waitlist if you'd like a petite lap giraffe of your own - the next one isn't due for about 156 days, and more than 600,000 people are ahead of me on the waitlist - and share the site via Facebook and Twitter. You will also find the aforementioned DirecTV commercials on the site.

Less than one week after petitelapgiraffe.com went live in March, it was visited more than five million times by people from 156 countries; 375,000 had joined the waitlist; and visitors were spending an average of three minutes on the site.

"The stats are amazing," says Perry Fair, digital executive creative director at Grey. "We are all excited to see so many people on the waiting list, sharing the link and talking about the campaign globally. I think it speaks to the power of a great idea and social media."