INNOVATE THIS:MY LIFE started to go wrong when Suzi Quatro won Rear of the Year in 1982. The news came via the Daily Mirrorand was read out by my brother, in the tone of a military officer trying to console a grieving war widow.

We were big Felicity Kendall fans in our house, and the decision smacked of more than just human error by the judges. There was something dodgy going on here. This was when Rear of the Year really meant something, up there with the Man Booker Prize in terms of cultural weight.

“You do know it’s a jeans thing, don’t you?” said my brother, as I harrumphed off to the kitchen.

“How do you mean?”

“It’s not a proper competition. It’s more like an advert, you know, to get us to buy Wranglers or something.”

This was a genuine moment of lost innocence, the point at which the corporate world moved into our personal lives, never to leave, and I’m only half joking when I say the evolution of that competition is the story of our times.

It wasn’t that Suzi Quatro was unworthy of recognition – far from it. But by 1982, any suggestion of authentic rock goddess had all but disappeared.

Tony Edwards, PR man behind the Rear dynasty, launched it as “just a bit of fun” (I love that quote, hinting as it does at the seriousness to come).

Today, Edwards sits atop a cheeky empire, and each year nominees are invited to a swish London hotel, where showbiz reporters and photographers wait outside for that all important shot of the winner looking back at us over their shoulder. This photo never fails to make it into even the most serious British papers.

This year, the usually upstanding BBC newsreader Fiona Bruce was happy to be seen bending over in Wizard jeans (who they?).

Every major marketing trend of the past 25 years can be seen through this lens: the rise of the corporate social responsibility agenda (Rear is now partnered with a charity, which uses the platform to campaign against bowel cancer) and the rise of “content” over traditional advertising. Sponsorship of an event takes the brand into the centre of the “action”.

But it’s on a personal level that the Rear legacy has been most profound. It has turned me from wide-eyed ingénue into cold-hearted cynic, egging me on to search for the point at which the cash has changed hands. Once that door opens, there is no turning back. Even the greatest international good news story of the decade was sullied for me when the Chilean miners emerged wearing Oakley sunglasses, (a stunt that garnered €500 million worth of “equivalent media value”, according to “research” – do you see what this is like).

Most of the examples of this creeping commercialism are harmless, even useful. The app market is awash with branded content: Guinness created an iPhone app around the rugby World Cup in France that used the phone’s sat-nav capability to find the nearest Irish bar. But such novelties are a sideshow.

The real battlefield is not Chilean miners or sport or music or even the arts, it’s the stuff that really matters. As the state recedes from view, under pressure to make back the budget deficit, the next decade will see commercial messaging intrude into areas previously thought sacrosanct, provoking some moral questions for politicians, who may or may not be up to the job of answering them.

Should brands be able to sponsor areas of the school curriculum for example? This would alleviate some of the funding crisis and help kit out schools with new computers or books or fund new buildings. But what are we to make of this month’s announcement by an examination board in the UK that apologised for the wording of a science question that was deemed to be loaded in favour of Big Pharma and against campaigners calling for an end to the marketing of powdered baby milk in the Third World, where the use of contaminated water leads to illness. On a similar line, the notion of hospitals being allowed to sell naming rights to pharmaceutical companies has been aired, all the better to cut the bill on a new cancer wing.

The usual response to these questions follows the line of: Why don’t you just grow up? We need the money and will have to make compromises. They may be right. But one thing I know for sure is that being an adult sucks. And it’s all Suzi Quatro’s fault.