The Home Depot is one of America's premier retailers in home improvement and construction products and services. Headquartered in Atlanta, The Home Depot employs more than 321,000 people (as of January 2011) and operates 2,248 big-box format stores across the United States (including the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam), Canada, Mexico and China. It is the world's largest home improvement retailer and the 2nd largest retailer in the U.S., right behind Wal-Mart.

The Home Depot was founded in 1978 by Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, Ron Brill, and Pat Farrah. The Home Depot's mission was to build home-improvement warehouses, larger than any of their competitors' facilities. The Home Depot was the fastest growing retailer in U.S. history. Arthur Blank, after selling his shares in the company, went on to buy the Atlanta Falcons football team and Bernie Marcus is involved in many charities in the Atlanta area.

In 1981, the company went public on NASDAQ and moved to the New York Stock Exchange in 1984. The 1980s and 1990s spawned tremendous growth for the company, with 1989 marking the celebration of its 100th store opening.

The slogan "You can do it. We can help." has been used by the Home Depot since 2003. Other slogans used in the past 25 years include "The Home Depot, Low prices are just the beginning" in the early 1990s and "When you're at the Home Depot, You'll feel right at home" in the late 1990s and "The Home Depot: First in Home Improvement!" from 1999-2003.

Lowe's headquarters is located in Mooresville, NC and was started by Lucius S. Lowe when he opened the first Lowe's North Wilkesboro Hardware in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina in 1921.

It was later inherited by his daughter Ruth when Lucius died in 1940 and subsequently taken over by her brother, Jim Lowe and her husband, Carl Buchan in 1943. It was fully taken over by Buchan in 1952 and expanded to many other cities in North Carolina in the 1950's.

Lowe's suffered in the 1980s, due to market conditions and increasing competition from the new big-box chain, The Home Depot. Lowe's eventually had to adopt the big-box format in order to survive. Today most Lowe's stores are of the big-box variety, though some classic format stores remain in smaller markets.

Prior to 2006, the Lowe's tagline was "Improving Home Improvement," and before that was "Lowe's Knows." In 2006, Lowe's adopted the new slogan "Let's Build Something Together." From all three media we learned that Lowe's ran 33.66% as many spots as The Home Depot.

On Local Cable, The Home Depot ran 331,792 spots in the last 12 months, with Lowe's clearing 317,689 ads in the same period. The Home Depot's biggest month was May 2013 when they ran 41,412 spots. Lowe's high-mark was November 2012 when aired 40,456 ads.

On the Radio, The Home Depot is a major advertiser running 2,284,936 spots in the last 12 months. Lowe's ran 493,620 spots in the same time frame. The Home Depot's biggest month was July 2012 when they ran 294,218 spots. Lowe's biggest month was August 2012 when they cleared 84,416 spots.

On Broadcast TV, The Home Depot ran 192,054 spots compared to Lowe's 133,963 spots in the last 12 months. The Home Depot's biggest month was May 2013 when they aired 24,506 spots; compared to Lowe's biggest month March 2013 when they ran 28,486 spots.

Posted: July 8, 2013