One 15‑Second Spot, Three Formats: Menulog's Refereefund
How the same pre-roll changes when it's cut for 16:9, 1:1 and 9:16, from a campaign we helped produce, edit and appear in.
Refereefund was Menulog's competition with the South Sydney Rabbitohs for the 2025 season. Order in the
hour before a Rabbitohs game, opt in, and you're given a random match minute. If the Rabbitohs score a try
in your minute, the order comes back as Menulog credit. We helped produce and edit the 15-second pre-roll
that sold it, and one of our own team plays the fan on the couch with the phone, next to Rabbitohs
players Thomas Fletcher, Junior Tatola, Jye Gray and Lachlan Hubner.
The spot was delivered in three shapes: 16:9, 1:1 and 9:16. Same idea, same 15 seconds, but each cut makes
different calls about what's in frame. Here's what changes, and why it matters for any brand running one ad
across several placements.
Fifteen seconds, one scene
There's no room for a setup in a pre-roll. The spot plays as a single scene: the app on the phone explains
the mechanic, the players crowd round to make it a Rabbitohs story, the try lands on the TV, and the couch
goes up. Every shot has one job, which is what lets it survive being recut three ways.
16:9, the whole room
1:1, three in frame
9:16, tight on the fan
Wide holds the whole room
In the 16:9 cut the celebration fits all five of us across the couch, with the Menulog bag and drink on the
table in front. Brand, players and payoff in one frame, which is what you want on a big screen where people
take in the whole picture.
Square is a crop, so check what falls out
The 1:1 is cut from the same wide frame and holds three people. The Menulog bag drops out at the edge, so in
that shot the drink cup and the scarf are left carrying the brand. When a square is cut from a wide master,
it's worth going shot by shot to see what the crop loses, especially the product.
Vertical needs its own framing
The 9:16 cut isn't a narrower slice of the wide. It frames the celebration tighter on the fan, so the face,
the phone and the cup fill the screen, and the try on the TV is tighter too, so the action still reads at
phone size. The easiest shots in the spot are the phone screens: a phone held upright already fills a
vertical frame, so the app shots carry straight into the 9:16 cut.
The 9:16 cut of the Refereefund pre-roll.
The fine print has to fit every frame
A competition ad carries its terms on screen, and they have to stay readable in every format. In each cut
the terms line is set to sit inside the frame at the bottom, and its size and line breaks change with the
shape. It's a small thing that's easy to miss when a cut gets rushed out the door.
If your ad runs in more than one place
Plan the vertical when you plan the shoot, not in the edit. Frame the key moments loose enough to crop
square, get tighter angles on the moments that need to read on a phone, and check every cut for the product
and the fine print before it goes out. That's how one spot covers every placement without looking like a
compromise in any of them.
