The answer: all of it.

Smart speakers and organizations know that eyes beat ears so they spend a lot of time carefully crafting what one of my clients calls, "The walk-in experience."

Take the recent Democratic and Republican conventions. You may have seen Hillary Clinton's speech - delivered in one of her numerous pant suits - here's a snippet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IifO41NZqpo

What you may not know is that particular pant suit was tested in TV lights. Look at this photo - aides to Sen. Clinton hold up four outfits to see which one works best in the bright glare. Think she'd leave something like that to chance? Think again.

Such details seem trivial but they matter. Take Sen. John McCain. On June 3 he gave a widely panned speech in Louisiana, the same night that Sen. Barack Obama spoke in the Excel Energy Center in Minnesota (by the way, think Obama's choice of location - the same arena where the Republican National Convention would be held - was accidental? Think again). McCain's staging fell far short of what we've come to expect. He was before a bright green background that someone said made him look like, "cottage cheese in a lime jello salad." Not exactly a Commander In Chief vibe. Here's how it looked:

The bottom line is that if you don't think through staging for high profile speeches, the audience will fill in the blanks. McCain's team apparently still didn't learn its lesson because at the Republican National Convention his Sept. 4 acceptance speech included a background image of a school with a lawn in front of it, leading to close-up camera shots that looked like this one:

You may wonder why political candidates - or anyone else, for that matter - can't just pick the outfit they like or get up and speak without thinking through the visual. And the answer is that we've come to expect that politicians and prominent corporate execs look a certain way, just as we expect our doctors on TV to wear white jackets. If you violate that visual code your stand a good chance of blurring your message - or having your message not get through at all. Because eyes beat ears. Always.

The need for visual staging has led to an entire industry that operates in the shadows. Look at this photo from the Republican convention in Minnesota. The teleprompter script for Cindy McCain's Sept. 3 speech includes the exhortation (in red type): "She hugs them. They start to walk off" in reference to her children who joined her on stage after her speech.

Do mothers really need to be reminded to hug their children? In the real world, of course not; in the closely scripted and staged world of political conventions, absolutely yes. And what we can learn from political events - and smart corporate events - is that staging is a critical piece of a successful presentation. One that audiences have come to expect. So when you're next planning a presentation, don't neglect that walk-in experience. It can make all the difference in the world. Think about it; stage it properly and you'll get your message across. Neglect it and you could end up looking like cottage cheese in a lime jello salad.