While it may look like new media initiatives are being fenced in at the agency level, there’s a role for the commercial production community if they’re prepared to come to the agency or the client with good, even crazy ideas, says Tamara Taylor, president of Game Over, a new multimedia creative company backed by Dalton/ Kessler Productions.

Taylor, computer tech and multimedia guru, is in the midst of creating multimedia toys ranging from cd-roms to Internet pages for clients like Colgate, Kodak in the u.s., Ford of Canada, and Microsoft.

When it comes to dreaming up ideas for new media, the agencies are at a bit of a disadvantage for several reasons, says Taylor. First, they’re struggling like everyone else to keep up with their day-to-day workload and don’t have the resources to put on the job. The fallout is that new media activities are either passed to the creatives, who have a difficult time thinking in non-linear formats, or trapped in the media department where content issues aren’t the primary concern.

‘Producers are ideas people, and for this kind of thing, can have much more of an active voice in the creative department,’ says Taylor. ‘But they have to knock, and keep knocking on doors and saying, ‘I have this great idea that I think might work.’ Programming costs will eventually drop dramatically and people will be willing to pay for ideas.’

Taylor, the daughter of an ibm exec, spent her younger years surrounded by computers. After a short stint at Citytv’s MediaTelevision in 1993 and some work with The Vivid Group, a virtual reality company in Toronto, Taylor began funneling her skills into advertising a year ago when a job-shadowing stint at Young and Rubicam led to a new position – specialist, new advertising venues – created by former y&r exec Rick Davis, now executive vp, chief creative officer, at MacLaren McCann.

Taylor stayed at y&r in this capacity for a year, then in June decided to freelance her services to enable her to work with more companies on more projects.

The Colgate project, through y&r, is an interactive diskette being cosponsored with the Canadian Dental Association that will teach kids the finer points of brushing and dental hygiene while they’re having a whole lot of fun, says Taylor.

Total production budget will run about $60,000, with the vast majority of financing funneled into distribution costs, which is the kicker on these types of projects. (Distribution details are still being worked out so neither costs nor network are being released.)

Other projects on the go include a Canadian addendum to Ford’s u.s. I-net site via y&r, an online initiative for Microsoft through Weiden and Kennedy in Portland, Oregon, and a major project for Kodak headquarters in New York through y&r in Canada.

The starting point for these projects is easy, the same as for any advertising campaign, with a twist, says Taylor.

‘The first question you have to ask yourself is how to spark the imagination, how do we come up with something that’s really fun, that people want to pick up, use, and then talk about because it’s really cool?’