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Most industry events are built around a trade show organiser with an existing infrastructure, an established audience, and a team whose job is to fill the floor. The Vital Nutrients Symposium was built around a different premise: four ingredient companies with overlapping market interests, a shared conviction that the supplement sector needed a better forum for substantive scientific exchange, and no existing event infrastructure to build on.
Kaneka Medical Europe, Gnosis by Lesaffre, AstaReal and Alzchem Group compete in some areas and share interests in others. What brought them together was the recognition that a jointly owned, independently branded event would serve the whole sector better than any individual effort. No trade show umbrella. No shared exhibition floor. A format that belongs to the topic, not to any single organiser.
akp joined the project at the earliest stage, contributing to the concept and taking on full responsibility for brand development, digital infrastructure and communications.
Before any communication could go out, there needed to be something to communicate. akp developed the event brand from the ground up: name, visual identity, logo, colour palette, typography and the full suite of design assets for digital and print. That included everything a live event requires on the day – roll-up banners, presentation templates, name tags, bags, signage.
In parallel, we built the digital infrastructure. A landing page covering the event concept, speakers, programme and location. A ticketing and payment system integrated with Stripe. A newsletter setup for ongoing attendee communication. Four co-organising clients meant four sets of stakeholders involved in every decision. The coordination requirement alone was significant.
The campaign to fill the event ran across multiple channels and stages. A multi-phase B2B email sequence carried the communication from save-the-date through to final registration push. A LinkedIn event profile with organic content and paid carousel ads reached the target audience of formulators, brand owners, R&D specialists and supplement manufacturers. The messaging was developed to reflect the event's positioning: scientific rigour and practical relevance, not a supplier showcase.
Speaker selection followed the same logic. The programme deliberately included external voices from clinical practice, sports and brand strategy alongside representatives of the organising companies. A gynaecologist with twenty years of specialist experience. The athletic trainer of Borussia Dortmund's women's team. A supplement brand founder speaking on consumer trust. The result was a programme that reflected the actual complexity of the topics rather than the product interests of the hosts.
Kassel 2025 covered Longevity. Fulda 2026 moved to Women's and Men's Health. A third edition was confirmed before the second had taken place. That decision, made by four independent companies each weighing their own commercial interests, is a more reliable indicator of event quality than any attendance figure.
The Vital Nutrients Symposium is not yet a large event. It is a precise one. The format creates the kind of environment where genuine partnerships start and conversations happen that a large trade show rarely allows. For the organising companies, it has become a platform they own rather than one they rent space on.
For akp, it is a case that demonstrates what early, deep involvement in a client project can produce: a coherent event identity, a functioning digital infrastructure and a campaign that reached the right audience – developed and delivered as a single integrated effort rather than a series of separate briefs.
