Erin Hunter, Facebook’s global head of consumer goods marketing, is one of a new breed of envoys the social network has appointed over the past year or so to help forge closer ties with the advertising world.

Facebook has proved popular with marketers looking for a new way to interact with consumers online.

Facebook-related spend however is mainly geared towards maintaining brand pages on the site, which Facebook provides for free, or on paid media outside to encourage people to visit.

Hunter has been brought on board to boost Facebook’s suite of paid tools, currently being consolidated from 27 products to less than half that, to make it easier for businesses to leverage the social network.

At the same time the sales pitch has changed, emphasizing media credentials that will be familiar to marketers.

Facebook's social element, a key differentiator for the site but one that can cause confusion when tied to marketing ROI, seems to be taking a back seat.

“A common misconception, from the FMCG standpoint, is that we are unique or weird or some very odd thing that takes a specialist to figure out,” Hunter says, speaking in an interview with Media Business Asia.

“The reality is that marketers should think of us as another marketing tool in their toolkit, that has the ability to reach a billion people globally,” she adds.

FMCG specialist

Hunter’s responsibility is liaising with the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, known as consumer packaged goods (CPG) in the US.

Fellow members of her division, working under Facebook’s director of global vertical marketing Michael Fox, are focused on other areas of promising spend, including travel, technology, ecommerce, retail and automotive.

It’s all part of a new push by the social giant to clarify its value for marketers, putting advertiser objectives first and then seeing how Facebook might tackle them.

“It’s a way we go to market, making sure we understand the needs of those specific industries and speaking their language instead of going in and talking technology all the time,” explains Hunter, who has a work history spanning consumer marketing and digital media with stints at comScore, Coors and Procter & Gamble.

Facebook’s embrace of traditional marketing paradigms, downplaying what is arguably the essence of its long-term appeal, has potential downsides however.

“It’s understandable from a business perspective why Facebook is doing it,” says Simon Kemp, managing director of the Singapore office for We Are Social, an agency network devoted to social media.

“The fact that they aren’t pushing that other story a bit harder in their literature and PR is perhaps a missed opportunity,” Kemp continues.

Social upheaval

The implications of more open dialog between brands and consumers can be daunting, with advocates arguing that social media’s impact will extend beyond dedicated functions to transform the way businesses are run as a whole.

Nonetheless, Kemp feels Facebook could lose out in the long run, if brands associate the platform too closely with more established media.

“The danger is that if they stick with being a broadcast focused kind of company, they risk getting left behind when something more tailored to a social connected world becomes more prevalent,” he says.