Marketing to baby boomers is booming.

Companies have realized that this generation — 79 million strong — are active consumers and not following the patterns of previous generations.

"The size and spending power of boomers is large and substantial," says Mike Hess, global research director at media firm OMD, and smart marketers have learned that they're not tied to brands they've used, nor are they too old to switch.

Companies looking for a share of their spending include those that traditionally target an older demographic — such as financial services firms and makers of age-fighting cosmetics — but the advertising has a bit more edge than before.

And newcomers — such as dating site Match.com — are jumping into the battle for boomer bucks.

Among the marketing strategies:

•Show "real" boomers doing bold things. Dove's TV, Web and print marketing campaign for its new pro-age (as in not anti-age) line of beauty products includes discreet nude photos of real women 50 and older.

The ads are a response to a global Dove survey that found that 79% of women ages 50 to 64 do not see themselves as "older women," says Dove's marketing director, Kathy O'Brien. The poll of 1,450 women was done last June.

"These women believe they are too young to be called old," she says. "We wanted to show that beauty has no age limit. We wanted to show true honest beauty, including gray hair and wrinkles."

•Target boomers with non-traditional services. Match.com has homed in on single boomers, and they're the fastest-growing subscriber age group for the site that pairs singles. Since 2000, the number of boomers is up 350%, spokeswoman Amy Canaday says, to 1.7 million, or 11% of its membership.

A current TV ad for Match.com features a widowed New York woman age 71 whose Match.com logon is DanishBeauty22.

•Using iconic, nostalgic personalities. Financial services firm Ameriprise Financial tapped Dennis Hopper for its recent ad campaign.

Hopper isn't a baby boomer — he's 70 — but boomers see the actor as "an older brother who's been out there," says Doug Pippin, a creative director at Ameriprise ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi.

"He's lived true to himself, and he's proved that you can do this your way."

Pippin calls Hopper a "great anti-hero hero," who "stands for unconventional thinking."

There was some risk, given Hopper's history of gritty movie roles, including the drug-smuggling motorcycle rider in the 1969 boomer classic Easy Rider and a mad bomber in 1994's Speed.

"Of course, when you go with a celebrity, you have to be concerned … but we did a significant amount of testing prior to going with Dennis. He tested really well," says Kim Sharan, Ameriprise's chief marketing officer.

The ads scored low overall with adults surveyed by Ad Track, USA TODAY's weekly poll. But of the target boomer-age consumers — adults born from 1946 through 1964 — about half liked the ad "a lot" or "somewhat," and 79% rated the ads "very effective" or "somewhat effective."

"We know that these ads are striking a chord," Sharan says. "Financial services is a pretty staid field, so we wanted to bring a tone and personality that is more emotionally driven."

Source: USAToday