September 1, 2021
2021 Annual Advertising Compliance Notice
Review requirements for advertising or training before use.
National Life Group’s Advertising Review Unit (ARU) is here to help with your advertising and training, so you can grow your business with confidence. As you probably know, much of what you use for advertising or training is required to be reviewed before it is used. This communication will help you if you are unsure of what needs to be reviewed, and how to get it reviewed.
Examples of Advertising/Training Materials Include:
- Website postings, web pages, web directory listings
- Social media with business content
- Marketing Emails
- Printed or published materials
- Letters
- Brochures
- Newspaper advertisements
- Training or prospecting presentations
To submit materials for compliance review, please complete the Compliance Review Request Form found on our website under NLGroup Compliance/Advertising (note that there are two pages) and submit it, along with the materials for review, to AdReview@nationallife.com.
Affiliated and Affiliated Brokerage agents, please work with your agency to submit materials since they need to keep track of your advertising.
Once received, one of our reviewers will look at the material, and contact you with any questions, or changes necessary. If changes are necessary, we’ll ask you to send us a final copy before we give you an approval to begin using the material.
Special Types of Advertising
Social Media – Affiliated agents
For existing social media profiles, no form is needed, you can just send the link for the page to AdReview@nationallife.com with a message asking us to review it. Social media sites that can be used for business purposes include LinkedIn, Facebook Business Pages, and Twitter. If you are planning to create a new page, please use our templates to submit the information you want to add to the profile for our review before publishing it. They can be found on the NL Group Compliance page when you log into nationallife.com.
NLG’s Social Media Playbook (for Affiliated agents) includes best practices for using social media, and a walkthrough of LinkedIn features.
On our agent website – go to NL Group Compliance, then Advertising and Social Media to find specific set up forms, and our Social Media Policy.
Social Media – Affiliated Brokerage and Independent agents
As an independent agent, you don’t need to have us approve your social media or website as long as you don’t post NLG content directly to them (in other words, download or copy our content, then post it – that’s not allowed.) You can share content from our corporate social sites to yours – finding content you like on our corporate social accounts and then clicking “share” on specific posts.
We’ve also created some social sites with NLG-branded posts specifically for independent agents to share to their own social sites. Here’s a flyer that explains the guidelines for doing that. This is our social media guide that has specific instructions on how to share our content as well as social media best practices.
You can find the links to our corporate social sites from our website: www.nationallife.com.
Here are the links to the Do Good versions of our social sites that has the NLG-branded content to share to your own social sites:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/do-good-be-good-make-good
https://www.facebook.com/pg/DogoodBegoodMakegood
https://twitter.com/DoBeMakegood
https://www.instagram.com/dogood.begood.makegood/
Websites – Affiliated
Affiliated agents that would like their own website can choose between FMG and Broadridge as approved website providers. You can find information about both on our agent website under Marketing/Digital Marketing. Once you choose a provider, new content and changes come directly to us for compliance approval through the website provider’s compliance tool.
Websites – Independent
Independent agents are free to choose any website provider. If there is no mention of National Life Group, its companies or products, or unique product features, then your website is not subject to our review.
If you would like to add NLG content to your website, we would have to first review your website. If you’d like to pursue this, please complete both pages of our submission form and include the link to your site on the form, and return it to adreview@nationallife.com. We may have edits we require to the content that we would ask you to make before allowing our content to appear. Be aware that once we review and approve an agent’s site, the agent would then be required to submit any desired changes to the site for our review and approval before they could be published.
CoBrand on Demand
Looking for a quick way to get your name on professional-looking marketing? Check out National Life’s CoBrand on Demand marketing system, on our agent website in the left column after you log in. This allows you to quickly personalize flyers, ads, postcards, etc. for delivery to you in either print or email. The pieces go straight to our advertising reviewers – no need to do a separate submission!
For more information on the advertising review process, please refer to National Life Group’s Compliance Manual located on the NLG website under NLGroup Compliance.
For specific questions regarding what needs to be submitted, you can email adreview@nationallife.com, or call our main number at (802) 229-3129 and we’ll put you in touch with a reviewer. Please note that failure to follow National Life Group’s advertising process could result in additional training, monitoring or termination of your appointment with National Life Insurance Company or Life Insurance Company of the Southwest.
Tracking Control (TC) Numbers
For most items we review, we assign a unique tracking control (TC) number to them, so that if they come to our attention in the future we are able to quickly find the review in our database, and provide a history to regulators if needed. An example would be TC111234(0821)3.
The numbers in parentheses are the month and date the piece was reviewed, and the final number represents how long the piece is approved for – 1 (1 year), 3 (3 years), or P (Perpetual). If there is no number at the end in most cases a piece is approved for a specific date or single use.
Thank you for your business!
*Note to ESI registered representatives – there are some exceptions for correspondence and previously approved templates. Please refer to ESI’s Written Supervisory Procedures, or Field Notice 2014-12.
