PPC, SOLUTIONS 8
Solutions 8 Account Manager Yusuf Can Kazancioglu Was Misled About the Unicorns (Thankfully, He Decided to Stay)
Yusuf Can Kazancioglu
Account Manager at Solutions 8
Yusuf answered the siren call of digital marketing in 2022, when he joined the Solutions 8 team as an intern. Very quickly, his passion for learning elevated him to the role of Google Ads specialist. Most recently, Yusuf was promoted to account manager and spends his days meeting with clients, helping them define their goals, and implementing strategies to drive results.
When he’s not working, you can find him hanging out with friends, working on the latest home improvement project, or playing video games.
Yusuf lives in Istanbul, Turkey with his wife and their 24-pound orange tabby named Müdür.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Yusuf is one of my favorite people at Solutions 8—and not just because he made my job super easy and pretty much wrote this blog for me.
(P.S. My dogs say thanks for the extra walk time.)
Yusuf is just one of those people who is instantly likable. He’s funny, easy to talk to, and has a general air of zero… um… cares to give that makes him someone you just want to sit down and have a drink with. Or several.
For me, though, it’s his sense of humor, which is equal parts sass and sarcasm, and always spot-on appropriate. Even though I don’t work with Yusuf directly on a daily basis, I’m always happy when I see him at our weekly meetings or when we get a chance to shoot the sh*t via Slack.
But first, the origin story.
Yusuf says he was “blissfully unaware” of what digital marketing even was until his lifelong little brother Efe (this guy) came along and mentioned it to him.
According to Yusuf, “[Efe] said I would be the perfect digital marketer, and there was this magical place called Solutions 8 where everyone rode unicorns while doling out some cutting-edge Google Ads skills. Ok, he might not have said that exactly, but the sentiment was there, you get the idea.”
Lucky for us, the unicorns were not a deal-breaker and Yusuf decided to join the team.
He began his career with Solutions 8 in 2022 as an intern, and in three months he graduated to specialist status. More recently, he was promoted to account manager, which he says involves meeting with clients, talking with them as they define their goals, discussing strategies, and ultimately implementing those strategies to drive results. He actually calls his role a hybrid of both client manager and specialist, which sounds about right to me.
Job benefits: The fabled red telephone.
Yusuf says the best part about his job is having a direct line to our resident Google Ads guru, John Moran. You know, like the famous (though fictional) “red phone” that supposedly linked the White House to the Kremlin during the Cold War? Like that, but a Slack channel.
“Having a personal hotline to John where I can both talk Google Ads strategy or mess around is the most important aspect of my job,” he told me.
But jokes aside, Yusuf says, “I work with an incredibly diverse, multicultural, but most of all, compassionate team. Every single one of my coworkers are incredibly humble and awesome human beings. Makes you wonder what Kasim and John had to sacrifice to the gods to achieve such a workplace culture.”
Kittens. It was kittens. (JK, crazy cat people. Don’t @ me.)
Job challenges: The rise of the machines.
Another reason I love Yusuf: He has a healthy dose of skepticism about AI in digital marketing being the best thing since sliced bread.
His biggest job challenge? “Google’s insistence to make everything AI-driven and how everything is turning into closed box in nature. Google has been slowly and steadily stripping the options digital marketers have when it comes to optimizing their campaigns, in favor of “automating” the process. While some of them seem beneficial, it makes diagnosing why an account is not performing as well as we want a nightmare.”
Still, he says if he wasn’t doing this job, he really has no idea what he’d be doing. He admitted he’s not much of a planner and prefers to take things day by day. When he was a kid, he wanted to be a pilot. He still does, in fact, and believes flying is the greatest achievement of humankind. However, apart from earning an engineering degree in his 30s or suddenly winning the lottery, he says that likely won’t happen anytime soon.
He would like to try skydiving though. Maybe. Possibly. It depends if Gerard Butler is free that day and available to “Sparta kick” him out of the plane. (Hey man, ya never know.)
Get out the map.
Yusuf was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey and still lives there now. He says it’s the one place where you can easily gain 10 pounds in a week and no one can fat-shame you, because the food is that good. (He recommends kebabs, obviously.) He added, in perfect Yusuf form, “I’m pretty sure we also have some cultural things, but who cares when you can have good food 24/7.”
Yusuf lives with his wife of four years (though they’ve been together for a decade… AAWWW), whom he calls one of the driving forces behind him. In his words, “I really adore her because she can be like a blog post and can immediately whip up five reasons why I can do it when I start self doubting.” Look, as a writer, I’m not gonna lie; comparing your partner to a piece of content is a solid compliment.
The couple shares their home with a 24-pound orange tabby named Müdür. His name means “manager” in Turkish, which is actually rather fitting, since he “likes to act like he owns the place,” says Yusuf.
The happiest place on Earth.
Yusuf told me one of his favorite childhood memories is of visiting Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida (United States) when he was 12 years old.
“We don’t have anything that can even come close to Disney World in Turkey, so seeing that magical place kind of expanded my imagination tenfold overnight. I honestly think being able to visit and witness Disney World, as a Turkish kid, permanently altered my world view—even if I didn’t fully realize it at the time.”
But when it comes to future travels, Yusuf absolutely wants to go back to Maldives. He visited what he calls “that piece of paradise” as part of a press trip (he was in the production business for a minute) and, like all good things, it was over too quickly. “I want to go back on my own terms, preferably on a longer duration with no work whatsoever attached.”
A typical weekend for Yusuf is really anything but typical, since he says he has three “types” of weekends.
If he’s feeling claustrophobic, it’s ringing up some friends to go out for good food (obviously) and some drinks.
Other times, he gets the urge to do something productive, so you might find him working on various home improvement projects like sanding and polishing his desk or fixing whatever happens to be broken around the house.
And finally, if he’s feeling lazy, it’s all about the video games. “I’ll shamelessly spend the whole day on the couch as I grind down some levels in my latest favorite video game.” At the moment, that game is God of War Ragnarök. But in a few weeks, he’ll replay The Last of Us for the third time (after he finishes watching the TV show, of course).
Count us in for drinks and video games—just maybe not the DIY projects.
Author
Pamela Sapio
Pamela is the Senior Content Writer at Solutions 8. When she’s not writing, you can find her hiking in the woods with her dogs. She is currently on a quest to visit every national park in the United States.
