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Success, it is said, has a thousand parents. Failure is an orphan.

But when a consumer-focused mail campaign generates a 0.0625% response rate – 30 responses on a 48,000-postcard effort – the words “failure” and “orphan” somehow fall short. “Travesty” is a good start. And “forsaken foundling” is an appropriate counterpart.

When designing a direct response campaign, marketers speak of the list, offer and creative triumvirate. And in this particular campaign, the list was perfectly fine – people over a certain age (definitely over 50, possibly over 40), within the sponsoring organization’s footprint.

So perhaps it was the offer, or maybe the creative. Now, I haven’t seen the postcard itself. This story comes courtesy of ChicagoBusiness.com, which did not include artwork in its write-up, so I can’t evaluate its quality. But I can say that the offer – a $10 gift card to Panera Bread – would not have been incentive enough to get this 40-year-old to sign up for a colonoscopy at Northwest Community Hospital.

According to ChicagoBusiness.com, a hospital spokesperson observed that people undergoing colonoscopy procedures haven’t eaten for hours. (They’ve also been chemically cleaned out from top to bottom, but tact preempted her from mentioning that fun fact.)

But she also told ChicagoBusiness.com she couldn’t think of anything more comforting after such a procedure than a loaf of bread from Panera. Which proves, once again, that men and women are radically different species.

You see, when a man staggers out of a doctor’s office, half whacked on anesthetic after having a flexible tube the length of U.S. 1 pushed up his backside, he is not thinking “I would certainly find a tasty loaf of freshly baked seven-grain quite comforting.” A man’s thoughts are more along the lines of “What…was…that?!”

There is no record of what Panera Bread thinks of the whole debacle, which is probably for the best.

The spokesperson, as good spokespeople will, tried to put the best possible spin on the campaign’s return on investment, saying that raising awareness within the community, and helping those who had the procedure done, was “priceless.”

But priceless doesn’t buy what it once did. The campaign, which began last August, most likely won’t be repeated.

To respond to the opinions in this column, please contact richard.levey@penton.com