The heads of Publicis Groupe's agencies, a total of 130 executives, were called together in Paris at the end of last month to hear Levy tell them the group had created bureaucracy to "satisfy egos".
The meeting was part of a strategic review, entitled "Reinventing our future", in which the chief executive tried to provoke his management into thinking about the changes occurring in media, society and business.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Levy said: "We need to dramatically change our attitude, our behaviour and the way we work.
"How do we stop confusing clients with contradictory points of view coming from teams each defending their little piece of turf - to the detriment of the client's interests, not to mention the Groupe's interests?"
He indicated that like many other groups, Publicis would like its media, advertising, DM, PR, digital and other companies to work more closely together.
Last month Wunderman's Paris and German offices, Harrison Troughton Wunderman and other Young & Rubicam branded agencies were involved in scooping the Monster.com account from OgilvyOne.
WPP has its group "teams", where a chief executive is heavily involved with the client business and coordinates the marketing output across the group.
Dave Allen, global chief executive of Enterprise IG, was appointed chief executive of Team Vodafone in January this year, overseeing the mobile phone company's business across 30 of the groups agencies.
Levy also cited the merger of big brands like Gillette and Procter & Gamble as an additional pressure on agencies.
Over 100 suggestions were proposed during the two-day event, but no specific direction was confirmed. Levy ruled out executive's ideas of taking the company private through a management board or establishing a technology-research centre in California's Silicon Valley.
It has not been a great year for the group, which was rated the 'worst performer' of the top five advertising groups for retaining and winning business by US analysts Bear Sterns. WPP Group was rated the best.
Levy declared that Omnicom was the group's greatest threat for its "sheer size and the successful way they handled talent".
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