NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Fast-food giant McDonald’s Corp. is hoping its first-ever sponsorship of the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, will “generate awareness” of its digital initiatives and will help it build relationships with entrepreneurs and “influencers,” according to spokeswoman Becca Hary.

Hary declined to specify how much McDonald’s MCD, -1.03% is spending on the event, which began in 1987 as a music festival and has since spawned film and interactive-media offshoots.

That SXSW attendees are likely to skew millennial is not lost on the Oak Brook, Ill., burger chain, which has witnessed slowing U.S. sales as more youthful consumers have expressed a preference for fast-casual eateries like Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. CMG, -0.80% . The 21- to 34-year-old demographic reportedly has in the past constituted about half of the overall attendance at the Texas festival. The next-best-represented cohort is those aged 35 to 54.

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Hary would not say whether the company’s new CEO, Steve Easterbrook, will make the trip. Easterbrook took over this month after serving as McDonald’s chief brand officer. As the company’s brand chief, he helped spearhead the “I’m Lovin’ It” brand campaign and a transparency campaign to show consumers how McDonald’s sources and prepares its food.

See:Why Steve Easterbrook is the man for McDonald’s

“It is quite surprising to me” that McDonald’s is going to SXSW, CEO Wendy Liebmann of the consultancy WSL Strategic Retail told MarketWatch. “The usual SXSW crowd is not the [McDonald’s] crowd. [Attendees are] usually edgier, healthier, more techy, definitely more millennial. McDonald’s may see this as an opportunity to show it’s become hipper, trendier and [be] using SXSW as a platform to be seen differently.”

At the event, McDonald’s plans to install several mobile restaurants featuring customer favorites from its breakfast, lunch and dinner menus, Hary said — and it will be serving them free of charge.

It also plans to host three sessions at which panels of judges will hear 15-minute pitches on how the chain can reinvent the customer experience and create content that speaks to today’s digitally connected consumer. Such ideas as drone delivery of customer orders and the deployment of customer-recognition software — which could one day store not only regular orders but mobile payment data — are expected to be on the table.

The company said conventional door-to-door delivery and drive-through could become obsolete as “connected technology” changes the nature of transportation.

The first-place pitch will earn an all-expenses-paid trip to McDonald’s headquarters near Chicago — and an opportunity to pitch senior management.

“We want to be in the flow of ideas, offering our scale to interesting partners, with the intent to make the lives of millions of people who use McDonald’s a bit simpler and even more enjoyable,” said McDonald’s chief digital officer, Atif Rafiq, in a guest blog post at the South By Southwest website.

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