Research Team Creative Brief: Creative and Account Teams Speak Out on Best Practices Robyn Blakeman 1 and Maureen Taylor 1 Abstract As a communication tool, the creative brief should seamlessly blend business goals with creative vision. This article investigates the role the creative brief plays as an internal communication tool between account and creative teams. Two data sets were collected. Two open-ended e-mail surveys gathered responses from 33 agency account management members and 42 creative and art directors, asking about their perceptions of the creative brief. Based on the two data sets, we offer pedagogical suggestions to advertising professors for ways to embed more discussions of com- munication and teamwork into creative brief assignments. Keywords Advertising education, assignments, communication, creative brief, account manage- ment teams, creative teams Introducing advertising students to the art and commerce of advertising has always been multifaceted. Like those of their full-service or traditional agency counterparts, advertising curriculums cover everything from research to media planning and buying, account management and planning, new media, and cre- ative in one form or another (Fullerton & Kendrick, 2017). But the actual 1 The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA Corresponding Author: Robyn Blakeman, Associate Professor of Advertising, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, School of Advertising and Public Relations, 476 Communications Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-0343, USA. Email: rblakema@utk.edu Journal of Advertising Education 2019, Vol. 23(1) 39–52 ! The Author(s) 2018 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1098048218812132 journals.sagepub.com/home/adv