Barbarian, a digital experience agency owned by Cheil Worldwide and operating within the Cheil Agency Network, has launched Adaptive Brand Solutions, a practice dedicated to enhancing a brand’s connection with consumers by evolving its personality, content and products. Jeff Blackman, MD at Barbarian, and Kai Tier, executive director of enterprise creative tech and AI, lead the new practice. It offers five core services — Adaptive Commerce, Adaptive Content, Adaptive Experience, Adaptive Relationships and Adaptive Workflows — and counts watch manufacturing company Citizen Watch America as its founding client, according to a press release from the agency. Blackman told Campaign that through this practice, brands will grow more adaptive and responsive to consumers’ expectations, becoming more personalized, conversational and intelligent. He added that these specific terms are typically used to describe human interaction.“Once a brand understands that and taps into these technologies to act and behave that way, possibilities open up to be more differentiated,” he said. “Its brand voice and brand style could come to life in ways that were not possible before and are more resonant with the consumer.”Barbarian also announced a partnership with AI software company New Generation to enhance the technology capabilities within Adaptive Brand Solutions.Blackman noted that while other agencies in the industry launch similar technology solutions, they often neglect to incorporate what brings them to life. For the Cheil network agency, Adaptive Brand Solutions aims to keep these components together, not separate them.“This whole vision only works when those things are brought together — creativity, brand thinking [and] understanding the consumer-centric nature of it with the technology expertise,” he said. Consumer expectations in commerceClients can apply Barbarian’s Adaptive Brand Solutions to website redesigns to improve functionality alongside aesthetics.More than half of surveyed shoppers said they had stopped purchasing items online from a brand because its website was “frustrating” to use, according to the agency’s 2026 Commerce Study.Tier told Campaign that today’s consumers hold new expectations for brands and their websites due to the proliferation of AI chatbots. Consumers are becoming accustomed to asking programs — such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini — for information and receiving immediate results, he added.“If your current brand experience is still putting the onus on the user to do the work, then they’re going to leave and go to one of these third-party LLMs and get the information they want there,” he explained. “An adaptive brand is one that can deliver on those consumer expectations and deliver an experience that’s elevated over what they’re going to get from one of these third-party LLMs.”With brands incorporating AI chatbots into their websites, Blackman said e-commerce is no longer about navigation but conversation.“Commerce was always about navigating most efficiently to get to your cart to purchase [an item],” he said. “[LLMs] flip that whole idea of what commerce is, and it makes it more emotional versus functional in terms of buying something.”