I studied brand identity at ISU and did some work in the area but my career has led me away from it.
I'm not a fan or customer of Wal-Mart or Microsoft but when I look back at their previous visual identity it blows my mind how much they improved.
It's tough to avoid the temptation of going with right now, I especially love looking up how 90% of companies in the 90s seemed to put an oval swoosh shape around their brand. Some brands you wouldn't even remember doing it had an oval swoosh logo.
Trying to think of a name change rebrand (good or bad) is tougher off the top of my head. I'm guessing the point of the name change is they actually want to forget the old brand.