What Cleveland’s new WNBA identity can teach us about place, participation and experience
When Cleveland introduced the Sirens as the name of its new WNBA team, I had the reaction I often have to a brand announcement: I wanted to look past the finished logo. I was curious about where the name came from, what had shaped it and whether the relationship to Cleveland was built into the identity or added later to help explain it.
There is quite a bit behind it. The development process took 13 months and included thousands of surveys, focus groups and community conversations. The organization also held more than 40 events across the region as it began establishing a presence here. Before the identity was announced, more than 9,000 people had already made initial payments to establish priority for future season tickets.
That early interest cannot be credited to the name. Cleveland had already been waiting for professional women’s basketball to return, and the team will not begin playing until 2028. Still, the Sirens launch gives us something useful to examine. It shows how a brand can draw from a place without relying only on familiar landmarks or civic shorthand. It also reminds us that introducing an identity and earning a place in people’s lives are two different things.
The Difference Between Using a Place and Understanding It
Lake Erie sits at the center of the Sirens story. According to the team, the name draws from the lake’s power and pull. The Siren brings associations with water, voice, attraction and sound, which connect naturally to Cleveland’s waterfront and musical history.
The visual details continue that story. Five waves in the Siren’s hair represent the five players on the court and the five Great Lakes. The accompanying swashes suggest the movement of the Siren’s call. These choices are specific enough to reward a closer look without requiring everyone to understand the symbolism immediately.
A local brand can include the right skyline, colors and geographic references and still feel as though it could have been created for almost any city. Recognition alone does not create belonging. A better starting point is to understand what is actually true about the place: how it has shaped the people who live there, what they take pride in, what tensions are part of its character and which stories they continue to tell about it.
The Sirens identity cannot carry all of Cleveland’s stories, nor should it try. It does, however, begin with an element Clevelanders know intimately and experience in different ways. Lake Erie is part of the region’s geography, mood and history. It has enough presence and complexity to give the brand something real to build from.
Listening Without Designing by Committee
The length of the development process also deserves attention. Thirteen months is a substantial amount of time to spend on an identity. Thousands of surveys, focus groups and community conversations suggest the organization wanted to understand the expectations surrounding the team before deciding how it would present itself.
Listening at that scale does not mean the public designed the brand. Community input and community consensus are different things. Asking people to participate does not require giving every preference equal weight or choosing whichever suggestion receives the most votes. Creative and strategic decisions still require interpretation, judgment and the willingness to make choices.
The value of listening is that it gives an organization a fuller picture of the community it is entering. People reveal what they care about through the language they use, the memories they share, the ideas they resist and the future they hope to see. Those patterns give decision-makers better material to work with than assumptions made entirely inside a conference room.
No new identity will satisfy everyone, especially in a city where people have strong opinions about how Cleveland should represent itself. A more credible goal is to create an identity grounded in something people recognize as true, even if they are still deciding how they feel about the final result.
Giving the Identity Room to Grow
The five waves are a small detail, but they reveal an important distinction between a logo and a broader brand system. A logo helps people identify an organization. A brand system gives the organization a set of ideas, symbols and language it can continue using.
The Sirens now have several connected elements: Lake Erie, the five waves, water, sound, voice and the phrase “Hear the Call.” Together, they offer material for merchandise, arena graphics, community programs, partnerships and future fan traditions. The value of those elements will depend on what the organization does with them.
If the symbolism appears only in launch materials, it may remain an interesting piece of design trivia. If people begin encountering it in consistent and surprising ways, it could become part of how the community recognizes and talks about the team. At that point, the work begins moving from brand design into experience design. The central question is no longer limited to what the symbols mean. It becomes a question of what people will feel, do and remember because of them.
“Hear the Call” may offer the most room to grow. It can speak to athletes, fans, young girls, families, partners and communities across Northeast Ohio. It can draw from Cleveland’s sound and history without tying the team to a single musical reference. More importantly, it gives the audience an active role.
The phrase leaves room for people to answer in their own way, whether that means attending a game, following the team, bringing a daughter, supporting women’s sports or becoming part of the community surrounding the franchise. The more than 9,000 initial ticket payments show that interest was already present before the name arrived. The identity now has to meet that interest with experiences worthy of it.
This is an important consideration for any organization developing a brand. People do not want to spend all their time admiring an organization’s story from the outside. They want to know whether there is a place for them within it.
What Happens After the Launch
It is too early to know whether the Sirens will become a brand Clevelanders recognize as their own. The team has not played a game, and the rituals do not exist yet. Fans have not developed the habits, memories, inside jokes, disappointments and shared moments that eventually give a sports identity its emotional weight.
Those experiences cannot be designed completely in advance because some of the most lasting traditions will emerge from the community itself. The organization can still create the conditions that allow those traditions to develop.
Over the next two years, the more revealing questions will concern how the identity shows up in practice. “Hear the Call” could influence what people experience when they enter Rocket Arena. The five waves could appear in ways that feel connected rather than decorative. Lake Erie could shape community events, partnerships, public art, music or game-day traditions. Young girls growing up in Northeast Ohio may come to see the Sirens as part of their own understanding of what is possible.
The organization’s behavior in the community will matter just as much as its visual identity. If the Sirens claim to represent strength, opportunity and the advancement of women’s basketball, people will look for evidence of those commitments in the choices the franchise makes.
A brand establishes expectations. The experiences that follow either support those expectations or weaken them.
What Other Organizations Can Learn From the Sirens
The Sirens launch offers several ideas that can be applied beyond sports. Place-based brands are stronger when they begin with something true about their location, listen widely without surrendering strategic judgment, develop symbols that can support future experiences and give people a genuine way to participate.
They also recognize that the unveiling is only an introduction. The fuller meaning of the brand develops through the organization’s decisions, relationships and behavior over time.
These considerations matter to universities, cultural organizations, nonprofits, districts, developments and businesses whose identities are connected to the communities they serve. For those organizations, people bring their own memories, loyalties, frustrations and hopes into the relationship. They notice when an identity reflects some part of their experience, and they notice when it feels imposed.
The question is not limited to whether people understand the brand. The more revealing question is whether the organization has created enough truth, openness and consistency for people to form a relationship with it.
The Cleveland Sirens have introduced their identity and issued the call. Cleveland will decide what that call comes to mean.
WovenSmart works with organizations navigating questions of brand, culture and experience, particularly during periods of change or growth. If your organization is reconsidering what it communicates and what people actually encounter, I would be interested in hearing what you are working through.
Sources: Official Cleveland Sirens brand materials and Axios Cleveland’s reporting on the identity launch.