Agency leaders, Toby Talbot and Lucinda Sherborne have launched Happenstance, a new kind of creative studio built from the belief that most brands leave too much to chance.

“Brands are putting more and more into the world, but too little of it changes what happens next,” Talbot stated. “That’s kind of ‘cross-your-fingers-and-hope-for-it luck’. We think brands deserve better odds.”

The studio launches as marketing teams race to integrate AI across strategy, workflow, production and commerce.

“AI makes it easier to produce more, faster,” Talbot continued. “But the result is more output, automation and fragmentation, with fewer ideas capable of changing what people notice, feel, remember, choose or do. Presence isn’t impact.”

Happenstance brings senior strategy, creativity and orchestration together to create the conditions for disproportionate things to happen around brands.

“Made luck starts with evidence, not instinct alone,” Sherborne noted. “We connect what the business is telling us with how people live and behave, and the wider brand, media and cultural context to find the revelation that gives the brand a way in. It’s a simple but hard question: what needs to change in people, and what idea can change it? We bring the right partners in early to help that idea take hold beyond the paid plan.”

Talbot is one of Australasia’s most recognised and awarded creative leaders. Sherborne is one of New Zealand’s most creatively driven and highly respected strategic thinkers. Having made big things happen together before at Colenso BBDO, Saatchi & Saatchi and DDB, they will remain hands-on with every project. The model is deliberately open. Happenstance can lead, work alongside agencies and marketing teams, or plug into an existing team, bringing the right senior people from different specialisations around the problem if need be. That openness also allows Talbot and Sherborne to continue existing relationships.

“Together we design the idea around how people actually live, so it’s built to spread beyond a paid media plan. We want to work with media partners, not around them,” Sherborne added.

“We’re not building another scaled agency,” Talbot emphasised. “We’re applying judgement, taste and timing where they can make the greatest difference. That’s how we make luck happen.”

Contact Toby and Lucinda here. Or visit www.happenstance.studio (a full website is in the works).