Someone help a sista out here. Is this for realsies?

I don't know if you've seen the Direct TV commercials with the little giraffe on the treadmill. They make my 3-year-old laugh. I honestly thought the tiny giraffe was CGI-created, and badly done at that.

But now I came across this website this morning, and now I just have no freaking clue. It looks real, but then again, I am the world's most guillable person. Am I just not getting the joke? I feel like any moment now, Dane Cook is going to come around the corner pointing at me saying "Haaaaaa...you silly motherf#$ker!They got you!"

Russian Petite Lap Giraffes

They even have a pretty realistic looking web cam.  Note where I've drawn the big red circle and arrow to indicate the walking giraffe:

So I did a google search, and came across this blog post:

Yes Virginia There Is A Miniature Giraffe

Glad to know I'm not alone.

Why is this relevant? Besides my love for all things miniature? Because it is an interesting marketing concept. Imagine that a portion of your branding campaign is to develop an entire site dedicated to a product that doesn't exist? Part of me thinks this is brilliant. I mean, I didn't even remember that commercial was for Direct TV until I ran into this site. I remembered the cheesy giraffe, but nothing else (marketing fail?). 

But the larger part of me - and y'all know that's a lot - instead of saying "Well played, Direct TV" wants to chuck a big F-U su-fi finger salute and vow never to use their product (and I had zero desire to switch to Direct TV even before this). I've got enough areas of my life to make me feel guillible and stupid, thank you very much. And, they gaves me a sad because I'll never get to snuzzle up to the adorableness of a petite lap giraffe. Thanks, Direct TV. You going to tell me about Santa and the Easter Bunny all over again too? But, I'm not bitter.

<*sigh*>  Mondays suck.

So, anyway, what do you think? Are fake product sites genius or customer-alienating? And isn't the web already filled with a bunch of fake, useless crap? We're running out of ip addresses and site names for this?