Marketing Pioneer – Ajinomoto
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012Unbeknownst to many, one of the very first people who revolutionized the advertising industry was one of the people behind the widespread use of MSG, Saburo Suzuki the son of Saburosuke Suzuki. He was not only a pioneer of the first company who aggressively marketed a food product known in detail as monosodium glutamate through traditional ad campaigns but through traveling pharmacies on horse-drawn carts that travelled Japan in the early years 0f the 1900’s.
The company we all know as Ajinomoto, one of Japan’s most successful comes from humble beginnings. After Dr. K. Ikeda isolated and succeeded in isolating the flavor responsible for “UMAMI” or the so-called fifth flavor asides from sweet, bitter, sour and salty, he approached the senior Suzuki who later set up the Ajinomoto Corp. To this day, they are at the forefront of making our lives a whole lot tastier after many years.