LAYTON -- People are asking: What are those billboards with the astronaut all about?
The answer: Can people read while driving and then remember what they see?
Billboard space in Northern Utah, a Fruit Heights politician and a question about space exploration are all part of a Utah company's campaign to prove the worth of outdoor advertising.
The billboard campaign, sponsored by Salt Lake City-based Reagan National Advertising, can be seen from one end of the state to the other.
Ogden, for instance, has three of the red-and-black billboards, which have in large, white letters: "Houston, First Word Spoken on the Moon."
"I was surprised when I read what the first word was, because I had forgotten," said researcher Ken Foster, of Foster & Associates, which is conducting the Reagan marketing effort.
Before setting up more than 40 billboards in mid-December, Foster quizzed people to see if they knew what the NASA crew of Apollo 11 first said when arriving on the moon in 1969.
"Only four people out of 300 could answer it," said Foster, who also is a media statistics professor at the University of Utah.
The goal for the company is to see if, after the billboard blitz, an increased number of people can correctly answer a phone survey about the word spoken by the crew.
Also on each billboard is a picture of an astronaut in space and a Web site address.
The company plans to run the awareness blitz for two months and will take phone surveys at the end of each month.
Foster has run similar campaigns, about half a dozen for Reagan.
The phone survey also includes the question: Who is the lieutenant governor of Utah?
The answer is Greg Bell, a Fruit Heights resident who took over the post this past fall.
During the previous test of the phone survey, Foster said, only 3 percent of the 300 people called could identify Bell.
And by the way, in case Foster calls, here is the first phrase: "Houston, Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed," from astronaut Neil Armstrong.
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