The school was founded by Rodolfo Lima Martensen,[1] a Brazilian radio host and advertising executive, at the request of media mogul Assis Chateaubriand, owner of Diários Associados, at the time the largest media conglomerate in Brazil, and Pietro Maria Bardi, then director of the São Paulo Museum of Art.

Under Martensen's management, with the motto "Taught by who does it", the school congregated professionals in the advertising business to teach its lone course in Advertising, and to this day stands by the philosophy of associating practice with theory in most of its many undergraduate programs.

In 1971, school director Otto Hugo Scherb proposed a name change to "Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing", which was approved and has been kept to this day.

In 1974, with the backing of the Globo Organization, a new campus was founded in Rio de Janeiro, and in 1978, ESPM started offering its first graduate courses, the choice of which was greatly expanded in 1981 by school president Francisco Gracioso, who also created ESPM's second ever undergraduate course, Business Administration with emphasis in Marketing.

Following the turn of the century, the school created doctorate and academic research programs, and introduced many other undergraduate courses, including Design, International Relations, Journalism, Information Systems, Social and Consumer Science, and Cinema/Audiovisual.