Why are two holdcos beefing online?

The girls are fighting.

In a post on its official Instagram account last week, Publicis Groupe shared a message directed toward WPP CEO Cindy Rose, seemingly in response to comments Rose made during the holding company’s Q3 earnings call, in which she criticized the trend of agencies obtaining business through what she called “this pitchless CEO handshake thing.”

“I do not think we do ourselves any favor as an industry of professionals by encouraging clients to bypass proper due diligence,” she said on the call. “I think I will leave it at that.”

In Publicis’s 16-paragraph-long response, the holdco, which has won several accounts outside of the traditional pitch process, addressed Rose, writing that her remarks were “an insult to clients’ intelligence” and that its business wins are the result of work and testing done by its teams, not due to a “friendly espresso.”

The post also alluded to Microsoft, where Rose was previously employed and whose business Publicis won—reportedly without a pitch—in April.

“You know its leaders really well, and your comments sell them remarkably short,” the post read. “They would never have entrusted us with a task of this magnitude on a wink and a handshake.”

Publicis’s post also seemed to reference WPP’s choice not to participate in a recent pitch for Coca-Cola’s North America business. On the earnings call, Rose said she made the decision so that WPP wouldn’t “spend another six weeks pitching for North America versus delivering against what we had already won.”

“You can’t be a passionate defender of pitch culture and plead exhaustion in the same breath. If an extra six-week run was enough to sideline your teams, it’s not an endurance problem; it’s a capability one,” Publicis’s post read. “Take it from us, investing in tech and talent really helps on that front.”

WPP did not respond to a request for comment. Publicis did not respond to a request for further comment by the time of publication.

Skip the pitch? The traditional agency pitch process has long been fraught due to concerns about the time and effort required, but there’s no consensus on how to resolve it. On the call, Rose said as much.

“You are not going to find anybody that says, ‘I love pitching,’” she said, adding that “the cost and burden of the process seems to be increasing.”

In addition to Microsoft, Publicis won PepsiCo’s global media business from Omnicom without a formal pitch, as well as LVMH’s Asia-Pacific media account.

“Out of touch”: While brands sometimes pick fights in an effort to gin up buzz and attention, some in the industry were not amused by this particular back and forth. Mo Said, founder and chief creative of the indie agency Mojo Supermarket, said that the holdcos should “just shut up already” amid an industry rife with consolidation and other challenges. (Mojo Supermarket’s Instagram account, for what it’s worth, commented “you guys should just kiss” on the post.)

“It feels like you have these massive corporations getting this publicity for their own politics, and that’s not what clients hire us for,” he said.

Catherine Merritt, founder and CEO of the agency Spool, similarly described the spat as “out of touch” and “immature.” A Publicis alum herself, Merritt said there were more pressing industrywide concerns, like burned-out employees and fears about job security amid “massive consolidation” and AI’s effects on the advertising business.

“The ego, the kind of disconnect, that was clearly apparent in that post to me,” she said.

As for Rose’s comment about agencies leveraging relationships to secure business, “the whole world works on relationships,” Said noted, “and if this person has better relationships or is more charming or whatever, sounds great.”

In other words, he added, “it sounds like they’re out-businessing you.”