If you had any doubt of the power of viral videos, look no further than the $1.6 billion price tag commanded by YouTube in its sale to Google. Viral videos, sweetheart of the consumer-generated media revolution, are very big business.

Why? For starters they really are a medium of, by and for the people. Anyone with a digicam and a creative eye for everyday life can stream a steady flow of content at virtually no cost to audiences that number in the millions.

Created in the language of the people, viral videos are fun, funky, irreverent. The higher the freak factor, the better for buzz-based consumers.

And they leverage an inherently visual medium to the hilt, featuring content that is cut to fit the small-screen viewing of the Net in both format and duration. That’s why all those attention span-challenged types in the blogosphere are coming back for more on sites like YouTube or Google Video (well, guess they're one in the same now).

It all adds up to authenticity, that Holy Grail of veracity coveted by every marketer and PR pro trying to get in the game of viral, word of mouth communications. Authenticity is the currency that enables brands to barter with next-gen consumers for awareness and ultimately advocacy. And viral videos are loaded with it.

So what do we as communicators do to harness YouTube’s authentic power of the people, short of shelling out a billion and half dollars for one of these sites?

Actually it’s probably more important what we don’t do -- namely, don’t try to force the rules of old-school marketing down the throat of this new medium.

Bastardize the medium and you bastardize your brand.

If we’re going to speak to this community we need to honor, or even create, boundaries that separate the editorial from the advertorial. That’s why I’m down on videos like Norelco Shave Everywhere or even the semi-celebrated Singing Smirnoff Yuppies.

Yeah, they’re trying to be funny, even absurd, but it’s still just an ad in a viral video’s clothing. Kinda like a bad infomercial, on crack. That might work for the ad guys, but as PR people we can aim higher.

Respect the medium and the medium will respect your brand.

The folks at Nintendo have a very cool take on this with the MySpace community they created for their new Wii video game console.

With an eye to leveraging the viral video phenom, Nintendo built the initial iteration of its profile around a contest to get people to submit videos of themselves playing with the new Wii controller. The only criteria: 30 seconds or less and be sure the subject involved Wii. Otherwise it was up to the people to film it, post it, rate it, chat about it.

It was done above board, people knew it was a Nintendo-sponsored contest that basically set the field of play and then backed off to let the people do their thing. Consumers got a chance to flex their creative muscles and show off a little while Nintendo was able to have real people show others what they’d do with the company’s hot new product.

That’s about as close to respecting the medium as I’ve seen. With interest in viral videos spiked by the YouTube deal, hopefully more companies and their communicators will keep the power of viral videos where it belongs, with the people.