On Thursday, Publicis Groupe posted a five-slide carousel on Instagram addressed to the CEO of its biggest rival, WPP.

The opening slide just said "Dear Cindy," with a handshake emoji. The caption, which tagged WPP, said "we're not angry, we're just disappointed." Twelve hours later it had 8,700 likes and 469 comments, and Adweek's own account had commented "I'm sat."

WPP, Publicis and Omnicom are the three holding companies that own most of the world's big ad and media agencies, and they normally compete for clients through pitches which usually involves weeks and weeks of research and late nights and presentations and spreadsheets before a brand picks one. This year, some of the biggest brands have skipped all that and just chosen Publicis. Microsoft handed over most of its global media business in April, PepsiCo did the same in September. Neither ran a traditional pitch.

On WPP's October 29 earnings call, an analyst asked CEO Cindy Rose about that. She called it "this pitch-less, CEO handshake thing that I keep getting asked about," said nobody loves pitching, and then she said, "I don't think we do ourselves any favors, as an industry of professionals, by encouraging clients to bypass proper due diligence. I think I'll leave it at that."

She didn't name Publicis but she also didn't have to.

Rose's real mistake was about the customer, not the competitor

Taking a shot at a rival on an earnings call is a choice and sometimes it’s warranted. The problem with this particular shot is where it lands. "Bypass proper due diligence" is a comment about the buyer. Read it as the Microsoft executive who signed off on Publicis, or the PepsiCo one, and what you hear is that you were careless, or charmed, or didn't do your homework.

So that’s the opening Publicis walked through. The letter calls the handshake line "an insult to clients' intelligence," says global companies don't hand over their data and media keys "over a friendly espresso," and describes months of testing by the client's marketers, engineers, data people and procurement teams. On Microsoft specifically, it points out that Rose spent nine years there and knows its leaders well, and that they "would never have entrusted us with a task of this magnitude on a wink and a handshake."

That's a completely legitimate thing to say and it explains why Publicis couldn’t just let it go. Rose had questioned the integrity of its clients and the credibility of how Publicis wins business and also the judgment of the people who chose it. A company has every right to defend its customers out loud and it should.

Then Publicis picks a second fight

But then the Instagram carousel changes subject. On the same call, Rose explained why WPP didn't compete when Coca-Cola's North American media business came back on the market last month. Her words were that, "we made a tough call between spending yet another six weeks pitching for North America versus delivering against what we had already won."

Publicis took that and ran with it. Its translation was that WPP’s teams were too tired to compete, and also perhaps not good enough. “If an extra six-week run was enough to sideline your teams, it’s not an endurance problem; it’s a capability one.” It followed that up with a plug for its own spending on technology and people, and a dig at WPP for celebrating the Coke win it kept only because Publicis had dropped out of the race: “a victory lap is fun even when you’re the only one who ran.”

It’s a good tagline but not the gotcha it’s dressed up as. Rose said two things on the call 1) clients should do their homework before hiring an agency, and 2) WPP decided one particular contest wasn’t the best use of its people. Both of these things can be true at once. Publicis isn’t catching Rose in her own words here, instead they’re deciding what her words meant and then arguing with that version.

So, there are two decisions here. Sticking up for the clients who picked you has an obvious objective. But making fun of WPP’s people is directed mostly at the industry crowd who likes a fight, and it’s hard to see what it does for the next customer deciding whether to hire you.

Was it worth it?

The answer here depends on what you count. Likes and engagement tell you people noticed but they don't tell you which argument they accepted. The evidence I'd want afterward is whether account teams hear fewer questions about how Publicis got chosen, prospects asking about the evaluation model, trade coverage that explains the difference between "no pitch" and "no diligence".

Publicis has all that material, by the way. Campaign reported in April that Microsoft ran a trial first and the results are what moved the account. That's something tangible a buyer can do something with.

And, as a reminder, WPP owns Burson. Publicis owns MSL (full disclosure, I previously worked at MSL) and Kekst CNC. Both companies have teams of really smart people who get paid to ask CEOs whether the satisfying thing to say is also the right thing to say. I'd love to know whether anyone asked them for their opinions on this one.

Both companies had a more existential thing to say here as well which is what should a buyer look at before handing a billion-dollar account to anyone, now that AI is changing what these agencies do? Instead, part of the exchange turned into a pissing contest about who won and who was too tired to run. Jokes are fine, nobody has to be solemn because their industry is changing. But insulting the other side’s people is its own decision, and “we were defending our clients” doesn’t cover it.

What I'd do with this

If a draft like that letter landed on my desk, I’d send it back with one question: what does this actually add for a customer who's deciding whether to trust us with their business and investment right now? If the answer is attention, fine, but then say whether the attention carries the substantive argument or just replaces it.

On the receiving end, WPP should not return the favor here. Give the client teams a substantive explanation of the Coke decision, and watch whether "capability problem" starts showing up in real procurement questions. If it does, answer it separately with evidence. Nobody wins a stamina debate on Instagram.

And for the earnings call itself, here's the check I'd add to prep this quarter.

Take every answer about a lost account or a rival's win and read it as the executive who picked the other company. Does it imply they were careless? If so, does your CEO have evidence for that, and a business reason to say it out loud? WPP could have explained its own standards for deciding which opportunities to chase, and they could have said you can't judge another company's selection process from outside the room. That still answers the analyst, and it doesn't volunteer a verdict on somebody else's customer.

Either way, before the next earnings call or the next open letter, it might be worth checking in with your comms team. Both of these companies have very good ones. It would be nice to know they were in the room.

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