I’m very pleased to share some good book news.
The Divided Brain: Understanding Human Behaviour in Branding and Business has been named the winner of the 2026 CANREADS Business / Finance / Marketing Award.
The CANREADS Awards received more than 400 submissions across categories, with the awards announced in connection with a recent Toronto gala/event. That makes this recognition especially meaningful, not just because of the award itself, but because of what the book was written to do.
I wrote The Divided Brain to make behavioural science practical.
Not academic for the sake of being academic. Not complicated for the sake of sounding impressive. Practical.
The book is built around a simple idea that has shaped much of my career in broadcasting, media ownership, branding, and business:
People do not choose with logic alone.
We like to believe decisions are mostly rational. We like to believe people carefully weigh the facts, compare features, study the price, assess the evidence, and then come to a neat conclusion.
Sometimes they do.
But very often, the decision has already started somewhere deeper.
Emotion. Memory. Trust. Safety. Fear. Familiarity. Status. Belonging. Identity. Pattern recognition. A feeling that something is right, or not right, before the rational explanation ever catches up.
That matters in branding.
It matters in marketing.
It matters in sales.
It matters in leadership.
It matters in communication.
And it matters anywhere one person is trying to help another person see, trust, choose, change, or act.
What the CANREADS recognition means
Awards are nice. I won’t pretend otherwise. When you spend a long time shaping an idea into a book, it is encouraging to see that work recognized.
But the most meaningful part of this particular recognition is the category: Business / Finance / Marketing.
That is the world the book was written for.
The Divided Brain is not a textbook, although it draws from behavioural science and neuroscience. It is not a traditional branding book, although branding is a major part of it. It is not only a marketing book, although marketers will recognize many of the challenges it explores.
It is really a book about human behaviour in business.
Why do people trust one brand and ignore another?
Why does a room resist a perfectly logical idea?
Why does a buyer say they want one thing, then choose something else?
Why do teams get stuck even when the strategy makes sense?
Why do facts sometimes lose to feeling?
Those questions sit at the centre of the book, because they sit at the centre of so many business problems.
A strategy can be smart and still fail if it does not understand the people it is meant to reach.
A message can be accurate and still fail if it does not feel relevant, safe, clear, or trustworthy.
A brand can have all the right features and still fail to connect if it only speaks to the rational side of the brain.
The CANREADS award is encouraging because it suggests this conversation belongs in everyday business, not just in academic research or specialist circles.
The broader recognition for the book
The CANREADS win joins earlier recognition from BookLife by Publishers Weekly.
That recognition includes:
- Prize 10/10
- Editor’s Pick
- Prize Semifinalist
I’m grateful for that as well, because it speaks to both sides of the challenge I had in writing this book.
The subject needed to be useful and credible. But it also needed to be readable.
Human behaviour is a fascinating subject, but it can become dense very quickly. Neuroscience can become intimidating. Branding can become jargon-heavy. Business strategy can become abstract.
I wanted the book to avoid those traps.
The goal was to take complex ideas and make them clear enough to use.
A leader should be able to read it and rethink how they communicate change.
A marketer should be able to read it and rethink how they build trust.
A salesperson should be able to read it and rethink how buyers decide.
An entrepreneur should be able to read it and rethink why their message is or is not landing.
A communicator should be able to read it and see why attention, emotion, memory, and meaning are not soft ideas. They are central to how people choose.
Why this book came from my background
For many years, my work was in broadcasting and radio station ownership.
That world teaches you very quickly that attention is not automatic. You have to earn it.
You learn that audiences are not just numbers. They are people with habits, preferences, loyalties, routines, memories, and instincts.
You learn that a message can be technically correct and still not connect.
You learn that trust is built over time, but can be weakened quickly.
You learn that people often respond to tone, timing, context, and feeling before they respond to facts.
That experience shaped how I think about brands and communication.
It also shaped how I think about business.
Being a broadcaster, radio station owner, and Ontario Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame recipient gave me a long, practical education in how people listen, what they remember, what they trust, and why certain ideas move while others disappear.
The Divided Brain came from that same curiosity.
Why do people choose what they choose?
Why do they trust what they trust?
Why does one message land while another one, even a better one on paper, does not?
The book is my attempt to answer those questions in a way that is useful for people who lead, sell, brand, market, present, persuade, and communicate.
Why logic is not enough
One of the biggest mistakes in business is assuming that if we give people enough information, they will automatically make the decision we want them to make.
More facts.
More slides.
More features.
More proof.
More reasons.
Sometimes that helps. But if the emotional and instinctive side of the decision is not addressed, more information can simply become more noise.
People still need to feel that something is relevant.
They need to feel safe enough to consider it.
They need to trust the source.
They need to see themselves in the decision.
They need to understand the meaning, not just the mechanics.
This is why branding is not decoration. It is not just a logo, colour palette, campaign, tagline, or website.
At its best, a brand is a set of signals that helps people know what to expect, what to trust, and why something matters.
That is behavioural work.
Leadership is behavioural work too.
So is sales.
So is communication.
The more we understand how people actually think and choose, the better we can communicate with clarity, empathy, and effectiveness.
Who I hope the book helps
I wrote The Divided Brain for people who work with decisions.
That includes leaders, marketers, entrepreneurs, sales professionals, communicators, brand builders, business owners, and anyone trying to get an idea through the noise.
If you have ever wondered why a logical message did not persuade, this book is for you.
If you have ever watched a customer choose the competitor and could not quite explain why, this book is for you.
If you have ever led a team through change and discovered that the rational case was only part of the problem, this book is for you.
If you have ever tried to build trust in a crowded market, this book is for you.
The practical lesson is not that logic does not matter.
Logic matters a great deal.
But logic is only part of the story.
People also need meaning. They need trust. They need emotional clarity. They need cues that help the brain decide whether something is worth attention, worth believing, and worth acting on.
That is where the work gets interesting.
A note of thanks
I’m grateful to CANREADS for the recognition, and to everyone who has read, shared, reviewed, discussed, or recommended The Divided Brain.
A book only really becomes alive when people start using the ideas.
That has been the most rewarding part of this process: hearing from people who see themselves, their work, their customers, their teams, or their communication challenges in the book.
The award is a lovely honour.
The bigger reward is knowing the central idea is resonating:
People do not choose with logic alone.
And if we want to lead, sell, brand, persuade, or communicate better, we need to understand how people actually think, feel, trust, and choose.
Where to find the book
The Divided Brain: Understanding Human Behaviour in Branding and Business is available at paullarche.com and approved purchase links.
For media, speaking, podcast, or business inquiries, please contact Paul through paullarche.com.
Paul Larche is the author of The Divided Brain: Understanding Human Behaviour in Branding and Business, winner of the 2026 CANREADS Business / Finance / Marketing Award. The book has also received BookLife by Publishers Weekly recognition, including Prize 10/10, Editor’s Pick, and Prize Semifinalist. Paul is a broadcaster, radio station owner, Ontario Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame recipient, speaker, and behavioural branding strategist.