Everything's in the details

The Lord of the Rings trilogy were obviously some of the most successful movies of all time. I remember watching the special features and hearing them talk about the incredible detail they went into for every aspect of the making. At one point they were talking about how the suits of armor were incredibly heavy, so they had a bar that they could lean against to support some of the weight when they weren't acting. This is how it had been done in the past too, but here was a bar that nobody would ever see on the screen, and they engraved it with the symbols of Gondor.

That's the kind of ultimate attention to detail that makes something truly great. A CD friend of mine once said that in a truly great commercial, you could freeze any frame, and you could see the entire overall brand.

Look at CP+B, or any of the great houses of advertising, and you'll see that even if the big idea is lacking, the details are nearly flawless.