The cover story for the April issue of Fast Company is about Senator Barack Obama. In the feature, Fast Company examines how Obama’s campaign strategy and candidacy for the democratic presidential nomination should give some insights into the changing business landscape. The fact that Obama has taken what we thought we knew about politics and turned it into a different game for a different generation is no longer news. What has hardly been examined is the degree to which his success indicates a seismic shift on the business horizon as well. Politics, after all, is about marketing — about projecting and selling an image, stoking aspirations, moving people to identify, evangelize, and consume. The promotion of the brand called Obama is a case study of where the American marketplace — and, potentially, the global one — is moving. His openness to the way consumers today communicate with one another, his recognition of their desire for authentic “products,” and his understanding of the need for a new global image — all are valuable signals for marketers everywhere. The feature also draws a lot great parellels between Obama’s campaign success and the issues companies will have to think about in order to be successful now and in the future. Things like internet marketing: The question is how. Social networking poses challenges for marketers, no matter what — or whom — they’re selling. Traditional top-down messages don’t often work in an ecosystem where the masses are in charge. Marketers must cede a certain degree of control over their brands. And that can be terrifying. Yet giving up control online, in the right way, unleashes its own power. And more than any other “national product” to date — and far more than any other presidential candidate — Obama has tapped into that power. Open branding and authenticity: What’s true in politics is no less true in business. “There is a new, authoritative consumer empowered by the Web,” says Karen Scholl, a creative director at the digital-advertising agency Resource Interactive. “And they can smell a fake.” The agency has coined the term “OPEN brand,” an acronym for on-demand, personal, engaging, and networks; it is a framework for companies to think about distributing brand messages in new ways. With Obama, “not only do people feel they know who he is, they feel trusted to share their views,” Scholl says. “And they get constant feedback from the campaign and from each other.” And leadership: There have long been leaders who are bosses, and bosses who are leaders. Having a vision and inspiring or instructing others to follow that vision have long been hallmarks of business and politics. But Obama epitomizes a new way of thinking called “adaptive leadership,” which is now being taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School, among other places. The feature points out various other insights for business. Check out the entire thing HERE. [Props Honest T]