Digging into the current branded video landscape, there are some obvious trends we can spot such as time-lapse footage, tilt-shift effects, and even interactive video campaigns. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find the more subtle trends and topics brands are finding to be consistent sources of interest and traffic.

Such as the apocalypse. That’s right… brands want to destroy the world-at least if they can get some good PR out of it.

Mutltiple brands and video creators have found ways to take something as potentially-frightening as the end of the world, and use it to drive awareness in their brand. For instance, Epipheo found viral success and social buzz with their video last week entitled How To Survive A Robot Uprising. It’s tongue-in-cheek, and mostly for fun, but has some legitimate logic behind its reasoning.

Just last month, filmmaker Vedran Marjanovic Wekster tapped into the same audience with a humorous instructional video on surviving the zombie apocalypse:

CGP Grey has built their online video legacy with graphics-based explanation videos, and one of their most-watched videos ever is about… you guessed it… the apocalypse–specifically, the Mayan/2012 apocalypse:

That same channel also scored 150,000 views with a humorous shortened version of their thoughts on the Mayan apocalypse:

This trend toward apocalyptic videos isn’t anything new–it’s just something new for brands. As much as five years ago, the online video world flocked in droves to a simple CGI rendering of an Earth-destroying meteor set to the music of Pink Floyd: