1970s and 1980s
Company founders Mark Penn and Douglas Schoen met at the Horace Mann prep school, where they were both students, and they later attended Harvard University together. After attending a class on polling taught by Bill Schneider, Schoen asked Penn to go into business with him. In 1974, Schoen brought Penn into Hugh Carey's campaign for New York governor and in 1975, they established the polling company Penn Schoen while Penn was still at Harvard.
In 1977, Penn Schoen was hired by consultant David Garth to carry out polling for Ed Koch's campaign for mayor of New York City. The company introduced overnight tracking polls and computer analysis of results, which informed the campaign's media strategy and helped Koch win the election.
Penn and Schoen focused on political polling in the early years of the company. In the 1980s, they first began working with international clients including Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. According to the New York Times, the firm's use of computerized polling analysis and specialized personnel for direct-mail were key innovations in political campaigns of the period.
Read more about this topic: Penn, Schoen & Berland, History