Second rebranding, what's the best approach?

[G-DC]

Our client rebranded in 2007 and it worked very successfully from an SEO persepctive. They put in place page-to-page 301 redirects and the new website replaced the old one in the SERPS very quickly in similar positions.

The market has changed and they now need to rebrand again so they are moving to a third domain.

So in 2007 they redirected DomainA to DomainB and now are moving to DomainC

Domain A was in existence since 1996 so a majority of the link profile is still directed to DomainA and is passing through it via 301 to DomainB.

Is the best approach 1. to just redirect DomainB to DomainC, leaving the DomainA links pass through a second set of 301 redirects?
or 2. would it be better to change the redirects on DomainA to go directly to DomainC (the theory here is that each 301 dilutes the value of a link so taking out a hop could be better)

[PaddyDisplays]

Option 2, but also try and change some of the back links to A/B to point to C  if you can.

[Sarbs]

Option 2, redirect chains should always be avoided and should go straight to the final destination URL.