Betsy Myers, COO of the Obama Presidential Campaign, admits that she’s no expert on branding or marketing. But the strategy of the Obama campaign that she described in many ways prefigured the social network marketing principles that were discussed by virtually every other presenter at LSB Brandworks University 2009.

Echoing themes from the two days that preceded her closing remarks, Myers touched on the qualities of authenticity, honesty, respect (for consumers or voters), the ability to learn from failure, and a willingness to give up control to the grassroots.

First, she described Barack Obama himself, as senator, candidate and president, as someone who is comfortable with himself both as a leader and as a human being.

“The leadership of the past, the command and control model, doesn’t work any more,” Myers asserted. “There was a common thread among a lot of people in the conversation early on that were saying leadership comes from the heart. It’s about collaboration and change. It’s authentic. Twenty years ago nobody was talking about that.”

“It was in that context that we started to look at Barack Obama as an example of a new generation of leaders.”

Second, the campaign made the decision to tap into the humanity of the American voter, just as many brands are making the decision to put their trust in the essential good will of consumers on social networks. Barack Obama is communicative and collaborative and he touched deeply into people’s hearts.

Third, the campaign made revolutionary use of social marketing channels in a way that has never been done before by a candidate and rarely by even the best of brands. Amazingly, she pointed out, the use of the Internet in campaigns is so new that the 1996 Clinton presidential campaign didn’t even have a website.

“Barack Obama is not a brand; he’s a human being. It was our goal to get that out,” Myers said. “Being authentic is the key ingredient. That was a guiding principle. He is calm. He’s a listener. He’s a learner. He knows it’s OK to say ‘I don’t know’. The best leaders don’t think they know everything.”

The campaign empowered ordinary people to take action and themselves assume leadership roles. The campaign gave them the tools, conversation topics and materials and, most importantly, the permission to just do it.

In the end, Myers said, Obama’s success “really was the power of word of mouth. Nothing persuades like personal contact. The key to the campaign was relationship building. Everything we did came back to one-on-one communications with their people’s own networks.”

“Because we were able to let people themselves be leaders, we really reengineered the time-tested political tactics that we had gotten away from.”