5 CEOs on their recession plans

Advice I'd give to other CEOs: Don't waste this crisis. Be thoughtful about your expenditures and be sure to focus only on what delivers value.

Meet your customers' needs: We visit 20 million shops every week, so we have a pretty good understanding of what's going on. In many countries around the world, consumption is still growing. We're also seeing that consumption patterns are changing. More people are consuming beverages at home, and while that's a problem for one channel of our business, it is an opportunity for another - our take-home division. So we're making sure that our products are readily available for meals at home.

I've seen this movie before: This storm is pretty ferocious, but I've lived and worked through crises in Russia, Turkey and Argentina. One lesson I've taken away is that you must continue to communicate with your customers. The cost of advertising is much lower, and you get more bang for your buck.

The bright spot: Despite the current economic tsunami, what we see is a great future for our business because no matter which way you slice and dice it, between now and 2020 there will be another billion people who become urbanized, and there's going to be another billion people joining the middle class. And that translates into a huge opportunity for our beverages.

NEXT: Bill Weldon, Johnson & Johnson