Mikateko Chauke is an award-winning communications professional with over 20 years of experience in Strategic Communications and Public Relations. She specialises in reputation management, stakeholder engagement and executive communications. In this interview, she shares what she has learnt about building meaningful partnerships, understanding business needs and growing as a communications leader.
What inspired you to pursue a career in communications?
I think I’ve always been a communicator at heart. I enjoy people, I enjoy conversations, and I’m naturally curious about what makes people tick.
But what really drew me to communications was seeing how the right message, delivered in the right way, can change the way people think about a business or a brand.
Over the years, I’ve realised that communications is much bigger than PR or putting out messages. I’ve learnt that it’s about understanding people, building trust and creating relevance. And in a market like South Africa, where audiences are incredibly diverse, you have to know how to speak to people in a way that feels authentic.
That’s what keeps me excited about the industry. There’s always a new audience to understand, a new challenge to solve and a new way to tell a story.
What does your day-to-day role involve as Head of Strategic Comms and Partnerships?
My days are incredibly varied, which is probably why I enjoy the role so much.
I spend a lot of my time looking at where the opportunities are, whether that’s with an existing partner, a prospective client, a new industry conversation or a completely different way of taking our offering to market.
There’s obviously a lot of strategy involved, but there’s also a lot of relationship-building. I could be in a meeting with the marketing team in the morning, working on a partnership proposal in the afternoon and having a conversation about content or a campaign later in the day.
For me, the role is really about connecting the dots. What does the partner need? What does our audience care about? Where is the business or commercial opportunity? And how do we create something that makes sense for everyone?
I’m very focused on moving conversations forward. I don’t believe in partnerships that look good on paper but don’t deliver value.
How did your experience in banking influence the direction of your career today?
Banking probably influenced me more than I realised at the time. It gave me a very strong understanding of people, relationships and, importantly, the strategic and commercial side of business. You learn very quickly that trust matters, that details matter and that you need to understand what the person sitting across from you actually needs.
That experience has stayed with me. Today, when I engage with a brand, I don’t approach the conversation purely from a communications perspective. I want to understand the business challenge behind the brief.
Is the brand trying to build awareness? Drive consideration? Enter a new market? Change a perception? Reach a particular consumer? Once you understand that, you can have a much more meaningful conversation about communications.
So, in many ways, working in banking taught me to think strategically and commercially, and communications gave me the platform to combine that thinking with storytelling and relationship-building.
What do you try to understand first before recommending a communications approach?
I always start with the “why”: what are we actually trying to achieve? I don’t want to jump straight into saying, “Let’s do a media release”, or “Let’s do digital”, or “Let’s do an event”, or some other tactic. I first want to understand the business objective, the audience and the problem we’re trying to solve.
Then I ask: where does this audience spend their time? What do they care about? And what would make them stop, listen and engage?
Once you have that understanding, the communications approach becomes much clearer. I’ve always believed that good strategy simplifies things. You don’t need to throw every platform and every idea at a campaign just because you can. You need to find the right combination that will actually move the needle.
What is the most difficult aspect of maintaining brand integrity while collaborating with diverse external partners?
This is probably one of the biggest balancing acts. You want to be flexible because collaboration is about bringing different perspectives to the table, but you also have to be very clear about who you are as a brand and what your audience expects from you.
I’ve learnt that you need to establish those boundaries early.
What are we willing to explore? Where can we be creative? And what simply doesn’t align with the brand?
I don’t believe brand integrity means being rigid. In fact, in most partnerships, some of the best ideas come when you sit down and ask, “What can we create together that neither of us could have created on our own?” That’s where I think strategic partnerships become really interesting.
What advice would you give to professionals aspiring to leadership roles in strategic communications?
First, I’d say learn the business and not just the communications function. Understand the strategy, objectives and what success looks like. Understand budgets and revenue. Understand your audience. Understand what keeps the CEO awake at night and, most importantly, understand what the organisation is trying to achieve.
Because when you understand the business, you stop being someone who simply executes communications and you become someone who can influence business decisions.
Secondly, build relationships. Your network is incredibly important, particularly in our industry. Don’t build relationships only when you need something, but build genuine relationships and add value.
And finally, don’t be afraid to put your hand up. There were opportunities in my own career where I could have played it safe, but what I quickly learnt is that growth usually happens when you’re willing to take on something that stretches you.
You don’t have to know everything to lead. You just need to be curious, commercially aware, willing to learn and brave enough to make decisions.
And I’d add one more thing: protect your reputation. In communications, your name is part of your currency. How you show up, how you treat people and whether people can trust your word will stay with you long after a particular job or campaign is over.
What keeps me motivated is knowing that I’m still learning. I’ve worked across different environments, I’ve sat on both sides of the table and every experience has taught me something different. Today, I really enjoy bringing those experiences together: understanding the business, understanding people and then finding the opportunity in between. For me, that’s what strategic communications is about: creating connections that have meaning and deliver results.
