Having connected with many brands small and large on various projects and shoots I find the campaign work the most engaging. If your goal is to get a larger reach, which many of us want, then using larger brands might be the way to do that. Having made a few connections with larger companies such as General Electric, Daniel Wellington Watches and Pepsi I have been able to be part of a larger paid campaigns to post to my account. These larger projects give me accessibility to work with a big brand while also getting noticed on a much wider scale. I usually ask for a repost on their larger accounts in the terms so I get the extra exposure or in some cases I will ask to get a chance to do a takeover their account to have a maximum view on my page and work.
The end result is quite impactful but it takes persistence and always engaging with these brands to recognize you, by far the hardest part. Tips to do so might be to always comment on each new post or sending the messages to see if they are interested in working together. In the case they say no thanks, reiterate the strength of working with better talent for content that can garner better engagement. If they simply say maybe at a later date, go for asking what dates would work better and how you can do something better.
Shot below is for Daniel Wellington Watches. Yes, it was shot with a DSLR rather than my iPhone but in the end this post received high engagement and was reposted by the brand mentioning me. At first though none of my shots were welcomed to get reposted but an email to the marketing manager in charge quickly changed her mind and a reply of "everyone involved absolutely loved this shot!" giving it a little bust.
Thanks for sharing your experiences in working with larger brands and campaigns. I actually attracted one already not really intentionally since I don't really shoot food photography or plan to do it professionally. I got the attention of all recipes (from allrecipes.com) on instagram after tagging them on there with my BTS photo of my food photography. Just doing it for fun as I needed to follow some actual food recipes and not eat pre-made food anymore. So only took about 5 minute to setup the shot and 10-15 minute shooting. Simple, but I thought about tagging the large brand to hopefully get something and I did, well not yet but I've been offered at least. Now since that looks like its working on my end I'll look into it further for other areas I actually am trying to be known for like fashion work or headshots.