Former Arsenal and England ace, Ian Wright has leant his skills for a new Cadbury-led campaign titled, The Open Road, devised for Children In Need sharing conversations about school, football and the need for someone to talk to, writes Neill Barston.

As our title has previously covered, the brand has previously engage with social issues surrounding supporting communities, which chimes with the founding principles of the Birmingham-forged enterprise.

For its new three-part content series, Ian Wright and his granddaughter, Raphaella ‘Raphy’ Wright-Phillips, share an honest chat as part of the initiqitve which is at the heart of Cadbury’s Open Up and Share campaign, supporting its on-pack promotion, transforming iconic Cadbury Dairy Milk Buttons & Caramel Nibbles into Open Up and Share Bags.

The series shows how everyday moments of connection, like a chat in the car on the journey home, can help young people through the challenges they face. BBC Children in Need research shows that children who often have someone to talk to are around nine-times more likely to say they feel happy than those who do not. Each episode is filmed entirely in the car, where sitting side by side can make it easier to open up.

In the opening episode, Raphy, now in Year 8, tells her grandad about her latest match, a 6-1 win in which she scored once and set up three goals. She names Lauren James as the player she watches most, and art as her favourite lesson after PE. The conversation soon turns to what happens when things don’t go well. Ian explains why he never wants Raphy to see admitting a problem as a weakness:

“You feel like if you tell people it’s not going well, they might feel it’s a weakness. And I don’t want you to feel that… Because you have to be able to speak to someone.”

Raphy describes how talking things through with her mum on the drive home helps her let go of a frustrating game and come back to the next session ready to “boss it”. Her mum, she says, “always knows what to say.”

Ian also opens up on his own school days: “I struggled with the lessons. It was difficult because I felt the pressure of not knowing, not doing enough, and then people teasing me, so I didn’t like it. I just liked playing football, and then what they did was, the teacher would say to me, “If you’re not paying more attention into school, you’re not going to be able to play football.”

Ian reminds Raphy that alongside her mum, she can always come to him, through the voice notes and video calls the pair regularly swap.

Following the premiere of the series today, Cadbury will release two further episodes of The Open Road on a weekly basis. Episode two features popular father and daughter social media and podcasting duo Paul and Phoebe Gillett, known as PuwTok.