Idea Home Winner
An Air Force wife and former Fort Walton Beach resident is the winner of the SPC Digital Idea House at WindMark Beach.
The winner, Leisa Tobler, lives in Maryland where her husband, Rob, is stationed, says an announcement on the Web site myhomeideas.com.
She told SPC Digital she has wanted to return to the Panhandle, and her husband's approaching retirement and her winning entry will give her family that opportunity. WindMark Beach is a new St. Joe Co. coastal community on U.S. 98 just west of Port St. Joe.SPC Digital is an Internet/digital division of Time Inc., which also owns Southern Progress Corp. in Birmingham, Ala. Southern Progress publishes Southern Living, Southern Accents, Coastal Living and Cottage Living, among other publications. The Web-based home giveaway was a marketing device in which SPC Digital struck advertising and promotional deals with the St. Joe Co. as well as the home's architects, designers, decorators and furnishers.
Tobler told SPC Digital she has a particular interest in decorating and interior design. The family will use the home for vacations until her husband retires. Their three children's birthdays are in August, she said, and they plan to celebrate each year in the WindMark house.
According to Ray Markwell, director of sales at WindMark Beach, Southern Progress Co. (which owns Southern Living, Cottage Living, and other publications) partnered with The St. Joe Company in launching its new website, myhomeideas.com.
The Idea House contest was intended to help draw interest to site and the companies decided to auction a $1 million beach home. Southern Progress bought home, St. Joe agreed to buy some contest marketing, as the contest home was one of the model homes at WindMark.
"It was a great way of promoting to everyone in the country, this is WindMark Beach, the quaint little coastal town that no one really knows about," Marwell said.
The contest was announced July 28 and ended Sept. 30.
As part of the contest, St. Joe had a promotional tour of homes - five models units, two of them furnished - and the homes were open to the public Wednesday through Saturday each week during the contest, drawing 1,265 visitors over 75 days.
Visitors could register everyday online or when they came through WindMark. There were 4.42 million online registrations at myhomeideas.com, of those 1.49 mill were unique registrations, or first-time visitors.
There was also a video of the home in the WindMark sales office that was viewed 48,000 times, Markwell said.
