What Dave did is unethical by the standards of the PR industry, of which I am a part. I contacted NOISE Inc. because I don’t appreciate other PR professionals deciding they can play by their own rules instead of industry best practices. To do what Dave did is not only unfair within the industry, it’s also misleading to other commenters and a potential conflict of interest.

Furthermore, if you think looking up someone’s IP address is snooping, then if I were you I’d be more careful than you likely are with your own tracks on the Internet. Where on my blog do I give anyone an expectation that anonymous comments are allowed? When I ask for an email address to sign in? When I offer people to sign in with Twitter or Facebook? If anyone thinks anyone’s anonymous on the Internet, they should probably Google themselves first. By the way, best of luck at Washington University-St. Louis. Get my point yet?

Dave’s entitled to his opinion, just like you and me. But if you do something as stupid as to misrepresent yourself regarding one of your employer’s biggest clients and get caught doing it, it’s your own fault and you have no one to blame but yourself. If Dave gets fired (and I doubt he will), I won’t lose any sleep over it, I assure you.

Free to talk shit on the Internet, as you put it. But not on my blog.

As annoying as bad arguers are, the best way to deal with them is to ignore them. Sometimes people that are vitriolic also happen to have good points. It is up to readers to decide whether they want to wade through the rhetoric to find the good points. Most people don’t feel like it, so they skip over the comment. Some people enjoy it. Either way, you are under no obligation to respond to posts you find insulting.

Dave didn’t really do anything wrong, except maybe waste company time. If he had written that comment and signed it as an employee of Noise Inc, then that would have been a mistake. But he didn’t. The only way anybody knew he was a noise inc employee was through snooping. Dave signed his name, he didn’t sign his company name. He did that on purpose. We should be allowed to hang out on the internet and talk sh-t under our own names if we want to.

You might have got this guy fired. All because he insulted you.

(As far as the gravatar goes, it is likely Milissa’s image is associated with the URL for NOISE in the gravatar.com database or in RealID on your website.)

Thank you for commenting on my position. If I may, I’d like to reiterate somewhat here what I wrote to you Thursday evening:

Neither office of NOISE, in Milwaukee as well as in Florida, had any knowledge of our employee’s actions when he penned his response to your critique. Owning this business almost 25 years, I’ve been lucky enough to learn a few things in that time — and one of them is, everybody’s got a right to an opinion; you certainly have a right to yours; and criticism comes with anything that’s public in nature, including advertising (even more so when dealing with high visibility entities). So suck it up and deal with it.

Oh, and here’s another lesson for my account team: maybe, if the critic is pointing out some potential improvements, be a pro, weigh the value of the criticism and if you can, learn from it.

For the record, “Dave” is a passionate, enthusiastic and (until this misguided episode) smart young man who is fiercely (blindly?) loyal to his clients and his employer. I’ve probably made a “righteously indignant” stupid mistake or two in my life and regretted it. In fact, I know I have. I think Perry has and will, too.

In the end, while his comments were in no way instructed and are in no way condoned by my company, they are nonetheless associated with us and for that, again, I am sorry.

And as I indicated, you (and your readers) have a warm welcome standing invitation to visit Milwaukee this weekend or anytime. We’ll make sure that the first round’s on NOISE.

P.S. While I’m not sure why CEO Milissa Sprecher’s image loaded with my name, I can attest she’s much nicer to look at than me.

“Dave…does in fact exist and is an employee of NOISE, although after this news today he may no longer be an employee.”

It’s not that I think Dave isn’t entitled to his opinion. He is. But when you’re commenting on a discussion of your own firm’s work, it’s pretty smarmy practice not to identify yourself as intimately tied to the object of discussion. It’s also a good way to embarrass your firm and potentially your firm’s clients. But at this point I think that’s pretty obvious.

As I told Sprecher in my response to his email, it’s also a shame. Not to toot our collective horn too loudly, but Aaron Renn and I are both rather clued-in, somewhat noted bloggers. When we write about urban issues, others tend to take notice, both in Chicago and, especially for Renn, nationally. If Dave had taken the time to enter into thoughtful debate with either one of us, he would have been strengthening his firm’s social network and this story might have ended up as a follow-up on ideas to improve the Visit Milwaukee ad campaign instead of his turning his own firm into the headline.

So no hard feelings to Noise Inc. or Visit Milwaukee, and I remain a fan of the city to the north no matter what. But speaking as someone who has a tendency to burn unnecessary bridges, I hope Dave learns to harness the power of the social media he’s supposed to be evangelizing in a friendlier manner.

Ahem, wherever he ends up.