Thanks to the popularity of do-it-yourself video websites like YouTube.com, it seems that everyone has become an amateur videographer – even the professionals. But when professionals try to act like a layperson, the handling of the message is likely to come off looking just plain amateurish.

Cases of professionals trying to generate buzz while hiding who they are, have seriously backfired. It has also undermined their credibility.

This technique seems to defy common sense, yet one of the world’s largest ad agencies announced that it plans to post amateur-looking videos on websites to spark word-of-mouth interest for a beer client. But if everyone knows that a company is employing expensive tools just to look like some cool dilettante created it, won’t people be alienated by the ad, no matter how clever?

Perhaps the most egregious example is the oil company that hired a political lobbying firm to mock Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” The Wall St. Journal outed the maker of “Al Gore’s Penguin Army,” in which the former vice president is depicted as brainwashing penguins and boring movie audiences by blaming the world’s troubles on global warming. When the Journal confronted the video’s creator, he continued to strike the pose of a guy making a video in his basement, whereas the reporters found that it actually came from the offices of a Washington DC-based lobbying firm.

For the past few years, politicians and marketers have tried to acquire the common touch by disguising themselves on blogs and other do-it-yourself media to get their message out. But web video operates on a different level, stimulating viewers’ emotions powerfully and directly. And because amusing clips with a homespun feel can be created just as easily by highly paid professionals to promote agendas as by talented amateurs, “buyer beware” is more relevant than ever.

Amateurs naturally strive to be professional. But when it comes to professionals striving to look like amateurs – in the end, who’s fooling who?