Despite working for a train line that travels exclusively between the UK and the French/Belgian/Swiss limits of continental Europe, Americans now make up 10% of Lionel Benbassat’s customer base. To target such customers, Benbassat has to get his head around in-depth customer information. He says his biggest challenge is “gearing ourselves up as a team and as an organisation to leverage the power of data and help us do what marketing is all about: making things better and letting people know how it will make them better”. It’s not all about the numbers though, as it is emotion that drives the company’s TV advertising. “The essence of what Eurostar does is to inspire connections between people and places,” he says. “We are a means of communication that is transport.”