Marketing strategy · Brand · Growth
Marketing leadership for mission-driven organizations and growing companies. Available by the project, or as your fractional CMO.
Not ready to talk yet? Take the 4-minute marketing scorecard.The approach
Frog’s Neck & Co. works with nonprofits, associations, schools, publishers, healthcare organizations, and small to midsize businesses that need experienced marketing leadership without adding a full-time hire.
Most engagements start with a problem you’ve already spotted: a website that isn’t bringing in leads, an event that needs more registrations, or a team that can’t produce content fast enough. From there, we figure out what’s driving it and what it will take to solve. Some clients need one thing fixed. Others need a plan for the year. Both are worth a conversation.
Frog’s Neck & Co. is a small practice by design. You work directly with me, not an account team, and I bring in trusted specialists (such as design, video, and web development) when a project needs them. I’ve been the client who felt like he was always being sold to, so you’ll get plain talk from me, and help with what you actually asked for.
Jason Roth
Founder, Frog’s Neck & Co.
A practical plan built around the results you need, with clear steps your team can start on right away.
A clear, consistent way to describe what you do, so your staff, your board, and your audience all say the same thing.
Programs that bring in members, customers, and donors, and keep them.
The tools that make marketing run smoothly without adding staff.
Where it helps, my recommendations include practical ways to use AI in your day-to-day marketing work.
Stepping in to give your marketing team structure: clear priorities, workable processes, and people who know what they own.
Two weeks. A clear look at what's working and a prioritized 90-day plan.
A few weeks to a few months. One problem solved, start to finish: a new website, a campaign, filling your next event, or a newsletter that keeps falling behind schedule.
Ongoing, monthly. Senior marketing leadership without a full-time hire.
No two engagements look the same. Start with a conversation.
Take the 4-minute marketing scorecard. You’ll see how your marketing scores in six areas and get four steps you can take this month.
Selected work from 25+ years leading marketing at mission-driven organizations. Available now for project and fractional engagements.
Springer Publishing's higher-ed textbook business had no dedicated sales team or organized way to track potential sales. Instructor evaluation-copy requests came through direct mail and unstructured email, overwhelming staff and leaving many unfulfilled. I built a website evaluation-copy form that fed directly into the fulfillment system, hired a freelance sales rep to follow up on the requests, and used the results to show how much business we were missing. I took the case to the CEO, secured a budget for Salesforce, and led its implementation. During this work, I was promoted from VP of Marketing to VP of Marketing & Sales to bring the two teams together. Working with the team, I decided what information to track and how each sale would move from first contact to close. That let us add automated emails and rank prospects, so the team could focus on the most promising ones. I hired a Higher-Ed Sales Manager and sales associate, established a Salesforce Admin role, and added three territory managers. Monthly sales-qualified leads increased 5X, and textbook revenue doubled.
Fisher-Price approached AMS about an endorsement for a line of Montessori-inspired products. I saw a chance to advance AMS's authority as the global voice of Montessori and build a new revenue stream, while keeping the program credible and impartial. I conceived and built the AMS Montessori Seal of Excellence: working with a trademark attorney to create the certification mark, designing the approval process, drafting the promotional and contract language, and setting licensing fees scaled from family-owned enterprises to global brands. I developed the program framework while running the Fisher-Price negotiation in parallel. Together we shaped the messaging, and the resulting product line earned Fisher-Price its first-ever Amazon.com homepage placement and a full-page spot in the Amazon holiday catalog. Working with an AMS colleague, I wrote or edited the Seal copy along with the parent-facing guidance in the five Play Tips brochures packaged with the products, including the "Montessori Approach" primer and the "Level Up the Play" activity tips that show families how to use each toy. Joint promotion with Fisher-Price generated more than 1,000 press and social media mentions.
AMS-affiliated Montessori teacher education programs are independent businesses that follow AMS's curriculum guidelines and issue AMS-branded teaching certificates, functioning almost as franchises. The number of teachers-in-training ("adult learners") was declining for various reasons, and my goal was to use AMS's strong reputation and top search rankings to grow the number of people interested in becoming teachers. AMS's website had a directory of training programs with contact details and links, but no way to track whether it led anyone to enroll. I led a new approach: using HubSpot, we sent each prospective teacher directly to the right training program and tracked each person's progress along the way. Making it work meant getting independent program directors on board, creating content to attract prospective teachers, and overseeing our digital agency.
I led marketing and communications at the American Montessori Society, the world's largest Montessori organization, through a period of record growth in membership, revenue, and web traffic. Highlights from the 2025 Impact Report include:
I led the development of the American Montessori Society's membership sales and marketing strategy to attract new member schools by reaching heads of school, who make the decision, and the staff who influence it. I worked with the marketing and membership teams to define the value of joining, and directed the creation of sales materials, automated email sequences, and the process for responding to and following up with interested schools. At the same time, I led the selection and setup of HubSpot and built it into the process, so we could track every prospective school.
Thousands cheered this video that played to kick off our 2024 annual conference in Orlando. The location drew controversy among our members over the host state’s policies, which made marketing the event a challenge that year. I wanted to acknowledge this sentiment without inflaming it. I created the "Standing Together" theme, focused on what the community stands for, rather than against. I executive-produced the video: wrote the script, hired and directed the editor, chose the music and photos, and commissioned "The Montessori Event" 3D logo, which appeared in thousands of attendee social media posts.
“Under Jason's leadership, our partnership flourished, culminating in Fisher-Price becoming the first-ever brand awarded the AMS Montessori Seal of Excellence.
Sarah Ford
Senior Manager, Global Brand Marketing
Fisher-Price, a Mattel Company
“Jason built a highly effective marketing operation at Springer Publishing from the ground up. He provided the vision and leadership that was a key to our success and rapid growth.
Ted Nardin
Former Chief Executive Officer and Publisher
Springer Publishing
“Jason is a visionary and strategic marketing leader... We designed a system to not only streamline marketing requests, but also enabled the sales team to better track a complex selling process.
William Wong
Director, B2B Philanthropy
World Vision Canada
On our work together before World Vision Canada
Let’s talk
Tell me what you’re working on, and we can set up a time to talk it through. I’ll let you know whether I can help and what that might look like.