Behold: The SEO World's Response to the Inexplicable Success of 'The Secret'

Given: It's hard to make SEO interesting or even appealing to marketers who would rather be designing graphics for a direct mailer or fantasizing about making music videos.

MRP Web Media gives us The Lost Brad Tapes, a compilation of the world traveler's attempts to become a website success. Supposedly these tapes have just been liberated from a vault, where they were wrongfully hidden on account of their incendiary nature (you know, kind of like The Secret).

In the first installation we find our hero in the desert, talking to a disembodied voice who is supposed to represent a website sage. He reminded us of James Brown, which resulted in us looking up James Brown clips for half an hour in order to validate this resemblance. It turns out he doesn't sound much like James Brown at all.

We can't decide whether this effort is clever or sad. It's kind of a cross between Muzzy and that one Tanqueray Adventure Show: Sneaking learning into completely improbable situations, with characters that you're supposed to feel a connection to.

We hate to be buzzkills, but we'll get to the point. You're supposed to be hanging in the wings, hoping against hope that protagonist Brad finds the "18 Web Marketing Concepts that Make a Difference." We're assuming he does, and we're assuming it will cost money to learn them yourself.

But that last part could be totally wrong. In which case, we're sure someone from the PR agency will gingerly correct us or leave a comment in hopes of generating more interest in this either paid or free (but deeply branded or name-dropping) list of web success Secrets.